
Copyright^? 



COFHUGHT DEPOSIT 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

OF 

Roosevelt's 
Adversary 



James Fullerton 




BOSTON 

THE ROXBURGH PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Incorporated 






Copyright, 1912 

By 

James Fullerton 



©CI.A330058 



PREFACE. 



When I started at the request of a large 
number of friends to write this book I de- 
termined to tell the truth no matter who 
was hit — consequently in order to show the 
animus and venom back of the attack on me 
and the attempt at my destruction, I have 
been compelled to bring in those who I 
would much have preferred to have passed 
in silence. 

THE AUTHOR. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ROOSEVELT'S 
ADVERSARY. 



I presume that people would say that I 
had been born with a silver spoon in my 
mouth. This is one of the worst misfor- 
tunes that can befall any human being, to 
have nothing to do, to be brought up prac- 
tically without any aim in life. My father 
was wealthy; we had a comfortable home 
and when I came into the world under the 
most auspicious circumstances, I had every- 
thing that could possibly be furnished to 
make a human being's life happy. This 
condition of affairs lasted until I was about 
five years old. It was only necessary for 
me to cry for something and insist upon 
having it and I got it. At five years old 
the decision was made that it was time to 
train me, and having brought up a family 
of my own, I realize the utter impossibility 
of bending a tree that has grown five years 
at its own sweet will. As soon as they 
commenced this training process they found 
that I had an iron will which my parents 
had developed. I wanted my own way in 
everything and insisted upon having it, and 
after fighting for about two years, it was 



6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

decided to send me to one of England's most 
cruel and hard public schools, a school that 
had the reputation of beating all there was 
in a fellow out of him. Well do I remember 
my first trip to this inferno. I arrived there 
with my mother and was taken in to the 
head master of the preparatory school. His 
appearance at once struck terror into my 
soul and when my mother kissed me good- 
bye, I felt as though there was nothing more 
left in life for me. I was immediately taken 
in hand by this master who had been 
warned by my mother that I was an unruly 
and intractable child. From that day the 
torture commenced. This man believed in 
nothing but the rod. He thought that the 
more he thrashed a child the more he would 
make out of him, and I firmly believe that 
many a boy has been ruined for life by 
simply being abused at school in his earlier 
days. This can do nothing but make one 
rebelious and hard and create in him an 
antagonistic spirit against his fellows that 
nothing can ever eradicate. From the time 
I entered this school until I left it two years 
later, my unfortunate little back was hardly 
ever healed. Upon the least pretext I was 
flogged, often until the blood ran down my 
skin. The tortures of the day were only 
equaled by the tortures of the night. Such 
treatment could make nothing but bullies 
of boys. At night the larger boys took de- 
light in torturing the smaller ones. Our 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 7 

beds would be upset and sometimes filled 
with wet sponges. We were sat upon 
under pillows and smothered, and with all 
the homesickness that we naturally had in 
our tender years, it made our little lives 
just a burden. The cruelties that I suffered 
there were breaking down my health and 
our family physician advised that I be sent 
to a private school. 

The following term I went to a small 
school in one of the midland counties of 
England and while conditions there were 
considerably better than they were at the 
public schools,, yet the food was of the very 
poorest quality, the man's sole ambition 
being to see how much money he could 
make and how little he could give in return. 
At this place I had one of the most unfor- 
tunate accidents of my life. Playing a 
game of, duck stone, I slipped upon a piece 
of ice, fell forward and one of my center in- 
cisors stuck in a post that I struck in my 
fall, causing concussion of the brain. I 
remained at this place for the rest of the 
term and was gradually getting thinner all 
the time, and when I went home for the 
Christmas holidays, it dawned upon my 
mother that I was a pretty sick child and 
upon the advice of a physician I was sent to 
the East coast of Yorkshire, where I re- 
mained for four and one-half years, much 
of the time with a dear, devoted old aunt. 

I may say in beginning that it is not my 



8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

intention to give actual names of all people, 
though most of my friends mentioned in 
this article are dead. 

The orders were that I was to take a daily 
bath in the sea. At this little seaside town 
they had bathing machines, which were 
nothing more than small houses on four 
large wheels. These were drawn into the 
sea by a horse and we were left until the 
bath was over, when we were hauled out by 
the same method. As no bathing is done 
in the winter on the beach, we had to have 
special arrangements made to have the ma- 
chine hauled down for me. A dear old 
soul who had been in my aunt's service 
some thirty years, used to accompany me to 
the machine. A small fire was made in a 
little stove in the corner and I was stripped 
off and told to jump off into the sea water. 
Often in those days ice would form on the 
wheels of the machine and vessels coming 
into the harbor and would present a mag- 
nificent sight with all their spars and rigging 
festooned with ice. Some idea may be con- 
ceived of the dread I entertained for that 
plunge. I remember how dear old Ann 
used to say, "Now, Master Jimmie, be a 
good boy and it will soon be over." I 
would jump off the steps into the sea and 
as fast as possible climb back again out of 
the water, there to be met by the embrace of 
the coarsest turkish towel and rubbed until 
I thought sometimes the skin would come 



roosevelt's adversary 9 

off. Under this treatment I gradually re- 
covered my health and I look back to those 
days spent with that dear old Aunt, as the 
happiest days of my life; absolutely care 
free, made a pet of by all the old sailors on 
the water front who used to ask me con- 
tinually to come out in their boats and beg 
my Aunt Jo allow me to go trolling with 
them at night. I acquired such a love for 
the water that it has remained with me to 
the present day. It was here I went to a 
private school and was prepared for my 
college course. They were an uneventful 
four years. The monotony of school life 
was varied only by excursions to Flambor- 
ough Head, where we used to gather sea 
gulls' eggs by hundreds. Many a time have 
I hung suspended in the air from the end of 
a cable with a basket lowered by my side 
with a smaller rope and walked along the 
ledges gathering gulls and other sea birds' 
eggs. These we used to sell at sixpence 
per dozen. It was during this time that I 
had one experience that showed how easy a 
small boy could be fooled. A companion 
and myself, while walking on the beach, saw 
a large black thing which we supposed was 
an upturned boat in the receding tide. We 
watched it for a few minutes and suddenly 
discovered that there was a tail to it which, 
as the tide went out, we found to be the 
flukes of an enormous whale. We waited 
until the tide had left it, and as I remember 



10 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

it now, it would have taken at least two 
men, one standing on the other's shoulders 
to reach to the top of its back. Its jaws 
afterwards made a gate where a team could 
drive through. We were so excited that we 
started back to the nearest fisherman's cot- 
tage and reported our find. The old man 
said, "Aye, but you are fine lads. I will go 
with you and see it." Going along he took 
out his purse, one of the old netted kind 
with two rings on it, and "generously" gave 
us sixpence apiece, immediately laying 
claim to the whale himself, which I heard 
afterwards netted him hundreds of dollars. 
On that same beach I have seen the tide 
go out fully two miles, and have driven in a 
carriage where a few hours later large 
vessels were riding at anchor. The cliffs 
at that point are some 300 feet high, I 
should judge, and I have seen the sea return 
in a violent storm and spray from waves 
rolling up against the cliff wet the windows 
two blocks away. I have seen many a poor 
sailor making for that harbor entrance with 
every shred of sail carried away, driving 
under bare poles and vainly signalling for 
the help .that it was impossible to get to 
him, miss the harbor entrance and pass 
along that north pier, in a few minutes to 
be dashed to pieces on the rocks. It is an 
awful sight to stand on the shore and see 
a fellow being sinking and be utterly help- 
less and unable to render him any assistance. 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 11 

The bravery of those men that manned the 
life boats in those days was beyond all 
imagination. They should be forever 
classed among the heroes of the world. 
Many a time have I seen them start out in 
that boat to render succor to some disabled 
ship and barely would they get outside the 
harbor till a wave would up end the boat and 
throw every man of them into the water. 
The boat would immediately right herself, 
and being self bailing, was soon free of 
water. Nothing daunted, those men would 
reach for the life lines hanging over her 
side and climb into her again, take their 
seats and resume their oars, and make an- 
other heroic struggle to reach their perishing 
fellows. 

During the holidays, I was often asked by 
the old fishermen to go trolling i and my de- 
light knew no bounds when I got my Aunt's 
permission. Not only would I enjoy seeing 
the net pulled up with its multitude and 
variety of fishes, but I was like a monkey on 
board, up on the cross trees or out on the 
gaff, and with every trip gaining health and 
vigor. At last this had to come to an end. 
The time appointed for me to go to college 
had come, and having passed my examin- 
ation to enter, I found myself one day in a 
large train load of boys, all headed for the 
one destination, to wit, Marlborough Col- 
lege. 

Here was a new experience. After being 



12 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

at a little school with twenty to thirty boys, 
I suddenly found myself among a crowd of 
over five hundred. I fortunately knew one 
boy in the school and from him I got my 
ideas as to how to get along with my com- 
panions. My inclination was never to 
study. I had no earthly use for books and 
could not see why any one else should have. 
I liked modern languages, French and Ger- 
man, but the dead languages were something 
that I could not fathom the reason for learn- 
ing. I was not long at Marlborough until 
I discovered all the athletic sports that were 
carried on at a big college, and my time was 
spent far more around the racquet courts, 
foot ball and cricket field. The gymnasium 
could charm me at any time and at the end 
of the term reports invariably carried back- 
to my father and mother the same account oi 
neglected opportunities. It usually read, 
"wonderful ability, but no application." I 
remained in one form some three terms and 
my father thought he would encourage me 
to greater effort, so he promised mc that if 
I would come back promoted to a new form 
the following term, he would give me a gun, 
the highest ambition of my life being to own 
one. In order to get this gun, I had to learn 
a holiday task which was always set us. 
The holiday task at this time was the whole 
of Goldsmith's Deserted Village, and to 
show the ease with which I could acquire 
knowledge when I desired to, I committed 



roosevelt's adversary 13 

that long poem to memory so thoroughly 
that when I went to school I could start at 
any line the master gave me the first word 
of and carry on the poem, and he was so 
amazed to see this indifferent pupil having 
learned this so thoroughly, that he offered 
me another hundred marks if I would recite 
it backwards line by line, a feat that I easily 
accomplished. After I had recited some half 
page, he stopped me and said that was 
enough, I could have the hundred marks. 
That gave me a good start towards the gun, 
and I took precious good care that I did not 
fall down. From usually having sat at the 
bottom of the form I invariably sat first or 
second for the rest of the term, and that 
term I was promoted into the next form, 
and with it I received my first gun. I hon- 
estly believe that that gun was the means of 
keeping me all my life a poor man. 
Whether it was the gun or the innate love of 
sport, for my father was a sportsman to the 
bone, I am not prepared to say, but from that 
day to this my greatest pleasure has been to 
get out in the forest, on the stream, the lake, 
or the prairie with a gun. So fond was I of 
sport and always a dare devil trying to see 
how near I could possibly come to getting a 
licking and not quite do it, that with two 
others of the same ilk, we used to go up to 
Savernake Forest and poach the Marquis of 
Ailesbury's preserves for hares and other 
game. We also kept a white rat, an inno- 



14 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

cent looking animal, but once it was put into 
a rabbit's burrow, it made the most perfect 
ferret that a person could possibly wish for. 
The rabbits would bolt from their holes as 
fast as they could get out. We had the 
usual loop net to put over the hole, and had 
never been caught but once and that time 
we were caught red handed. We had four 
dead rabbits and the excitement had been 
fast and furious, but in the midst of it all, 
the one who had been left to keep guard 
got so excited that he forgot to do sentry 
duty and a master's head appeared over the 
brow of the hill. If you had dropped a 
bomb among us it would hardly have caused 
more genuine consternation, but this master 
happened to be all man, and remembered 
that he had been a boy himself and just as 
big a devil as any of us. After scaring us 
with a threat of taking us to the head mas- 
ter, which we knew would cause us to be 
expelled from the school, because we not 
only were breaking the school rules, but also 
the laws of the land, he said, "Let's see how 
that thing works boys," and stayed and 
helped us catch two more rabbits. It is 
needless to say that that piece of work was 
never given away until this appears in print, 
and as he has passed to his "long" home, he 
has gone beyond censure. The reader may 
wonder how we could dispose of the game 
that we killed. That was an easy matter. 
We invariably dressed it and cleaned it thor- 



roosevelt's adversary 15 

oughly, and as we were all allowed to keep 
pet rabbits, we used to go in with baskets of 
green feed for our rabbits that we had picked 
along the hedge rows. The old gate keeper 
at the college also kept rabbits and we have 
stood sometimes with a brace of pheasants 
plucked and cleaned at the bottom of the 
basket and offered him rabbit feed from the 
top of it. The nerve of the thing was what 
carried us through and saved us. We cer- 
tainly were an innocent looking trio. 
Suspicion fell upon us later and then we 
never left the college together. We always 
had our trysting place and we always pre- 
pared ourselves for an alibi. 

Every boy in the college wore a little skull 
cap made of black cloth trimmed with pink 
ribbon. When the cap became faded and 
shabby we got an order for a new one and 
immediately threw the old one away. As 
we were all known by number and not by 
name, each boy had his number in his cap 
and we always made use of these other caps 
that we could pick up as the boys threw 
them away. Whenever we went on our 
marauding expeditions we wore one of these 
caps. It as an easy matter for the owner of 
the cap in every case to prove an alibi should 
his cap be found by the keeper of the pre- 
serves. Consequently whenever we were 
chased by keepers or saw danger near as 
we ran we saw to it that our caps blew off. 
The keeper rinding the cap, seeing the num- 



16 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

ber in it, knew that he would have no 
trouble in calling the boy on the carpet. 
The head master, being chief inquisitor, 
would call the boy into his office or 
possibly before the whole school and im- 
mediately accuse him of having been caught 
poaching. Naturally the boy would deny 
it and prove by his companions that he had 
been up on the cricket field or in some other 
place. The keeper who had accused him 
would certainly be nonplused, but would 
assert that he could pick out the boy he 
had seen there. To pick out one boy or 
three boys out of five hundred or over was 
a contract that none but a fool would ever 
have taken and whenever they did under- 
take it they made a signal failure of it. 

Among the other sports that we used to 
have in the shape of poaching was fishing. 
There was a very fine trout stream along 
the road to Salisbury and we used to go 
down in the meadows along this stream, 
one on each side of the brook, and basking 
in the sun we would see these speckled 
beauties. We had three fish hooks tied 
back to back fastened on to a willow. The 
boy on one side would reach over and slide 
his hook underneath the fish, while the boy 
on the. other side told him which way to 
move it, and when the one on the opposite 
side of the creek to the one who was holding 
the hook said "now jerk" there was gener- 
ally a trout hanging at the end of the willow 



roosevelt's adversary 17 

when it came up. All this game we used 
to cook in our studies and we had many a 
good feed, which was often shared by one 
of the masters who had caught us ferreting 
with a white rat. 

The dormitories had iron bars over the 
windows and we removed the bars from the 
windows, tied sheets together, and making 
these fast to our iron bedsteads, had low- 
ered ourselves from the third story window 
to the ground. This let us down outside 
the walls of the campus and we would go 
up town to get ice cream and other dainties, 
not that we wanted the ice cream, but just 
to see how near we could come to getting 
out of the college grounds without getting 
caught. In those days we were classed as 
bad boys, whereas as a matter of fact, a boy 
who is as mischievous as we three were, to 
my knowledge, rarely grows up into a bad 
man. We may not make a howling success 
m the world, but yet some of the best 
generals in the British army, some of the 
greatest heroes of the navy and doubtless 
of any army or navy, have been boys of just 
that character, and if I were placed in the 
position of a school master there would be 
numbers of just such escapades that I 
should never see. In fact, in later years 
when I have had men under my charge, 
I have constantly seen things that I never 
thought of reporting to a commanding 
officer. We were such an untamable bunch 



18 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

that while they never could catch us red 
handed, yet they knew that we were the evil 
genii that were causing most of the disturb- 
ance with the keepers and the neighborhood 
generally, and it was suggested to our 
parents that if they wished to keep us out 
of trouble they had better put us somewhere 
where we could be watched closer. To this 
end my father took me back to the place 
where, as a nine year old boy, I had had the 
accident that caused concussion of my brain. 
This time my father went with me, and 
while I was but fifteen, I was a pretty good 
sized man, husky, strong, athletic and 
afraid of nothing, and my father told this 
man to be very strict and severe with me, 
and on no account to spare the rod. I was 
then supposed to be studying preparatory 
to taking my course as a mining engineer. 
There were four other students, varying in 
age from my own up to twenty-two, and 
these older men had considerable license, 
whereas I was held down with an iron hand, 
against which my very soul rebelled. For 
a few weeks we got along and at last this 
tyrant of a man informed me that if I did 
not get a certain lesson within a limited 
time, which he told me he knew I was per- 
fectly capable of doing, that he would come 
in with a cane and give me the best licking 
I ever had in my life. I was always shut up 
in a small room like a cell to study by my- 
self and in this room was an open fire place 



roosevelt's adversary 19 

with the usual fire irons consisting of a 
poker, tongs and shovel. I told him that I 
could not get the lesson in the time he 
specified and he turned upon me like a tiger, 
told me not to dare answer him back. I 
slammed the book on the table and told him 
then and there that I never would learn an- 
other lesson in his house, and he might as 
well commence a fight at once if he wanted 
to fight. He immediately rushed off for 
his cane and I picked up the poker and stood 
like a lion at bay. I told him when he re- 
turned with his cane that if he struck me 
one blow I would kill him on the spot, and 
he knew that I would not only do it but 
that I was perfectly capable of doing it. He 
immediately locked the door and locked me 
in, but foolishly failed to lock the window, 
which I immediately negotiated, and when 
he returned to the room he found his bird 
had flown. I had a few shillings in my 
pocket and I made for the nearest station 
some five miles away. I caught a freight 
train and told the conductor my story. He 
sympathized with the boy who was fleeing 
from a tyrant and just as the train pulled 
out we saw the master drive up in a hurry 
to the station. He evidently was not able 
to stop the train because there was no effort 
to stop me anywhere, and as this train went 
close to my home, I was able to get off with- 
in nine miles of it. When I got off the train 
I was afraid to go home, but I knew an old 



20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

keeper that we had on our preserves, and 
I made for his house, where I received a 
warm welcome. He made some excuse 
and left me in the house with his wife and 
went straight to my home and informed my 
father where he could find me and the first 
thing I knew the latter appeared in our 
carriage at the door. This ended my school 
career. I positively refused to return to 
school under any circumstances whatever, 
and my father, being a man of good, sound 
judgment and sense, realized that it would 
be useless to fight me. The tree they had 
never tried to bend till it was five years 
old was absolutely impossible to bend at 
fifteen. 

My father made arrangements then with 
a mining engineer to take me for a term of 
three years and I started out on my life 
work, as I supposed. It was intensely in- 
teresting and I was an apt scholar, so apt 
a scholar that after I had been six months 
working at it, I was often intrusted with 
important work with the instrument down 
the mines and sent to make special investi- 
gations of cavings, etc. Shortly after I 
commenced going down the mines, I began 
to suffer intensely with headaches, whether 
it was the stooping in the mine or the foul 
gases, and sometimes the long hours, hav- 
ing to work all night on surveys in order 
not to delay the men, I do not know. I 
found that no matter how much knowledge 



roosevelt's adversary 21 

I acquired I should forever be somebody 
else's servant, and this, coupled with my 
constantly recurring headaches, determined 
me to throw up the engineering, much as 
I liked the work. I left home one morning 
to go down the mine, never thinking that 
it was the last trip I should make to it. 
Some small disagreement with my superior 
caused me then and there to declare that I 
never would go down a mine again, that I 
had suffered long enough. He sent a mes- 
senger up for my father, as that day we 
happened to be working in one of the mines 
on our family estate. When my father 
drove down to the office, I can well remem- 
ber the disappointment depicted in his face. 
He thought that at last he had found some- 
thing that his wayward son would stick to. 
However, he made no complaint nor yet 
one word chiding me in all my drive to my 
home. For two days he went around as 
one in a daze, and I remember his words 
as if it were yesterday. He came to me and 
said, "My boy, you have got to decide upon 
some course in life for yourself. Your 
mother and I have done all we can for you." 
I told him that I wanted a week to consider 
the matter. At this time my cousin, who 
had been out in Canada with Prince Arthur 
as his equerry, came to stay at our house 
and he told such wonderful tales of the free 
life of the forest, of the moose, the deer, the 
game in abundance, the fishing, the canoe- 



22 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

ing, and painted in such glowing colors all 
the delights of the frontier freedom, that I 
decided I would go to Canada, and I firmly 
told my father of my decision. He said, 
"Now remember, my boy, you have made 
your own bed and you must lie in it. I do 
not want you to leave England, but if you 
insist, you will go on the day appointed. " 
That day was the 21st day of April, 1870, 
my mother's birthday. Two nights before 
sailing, he relented and came to me in my 
bedroom and offered me one thousand 
pounds if I would stay home. I told him 
"No" that I could not bear to be governed, 
that I had my own way as a baby and had 
fought for it up to that time, and I pro- 
posed to go to Canada to be my own master. 
He replied, "My boy, I am afraid you will 
never be your own master, and I fear you 
will come to some harm/' I told him that 
I would be my own master before I was 
twenty-one, and so it proved. I was 
twenty-one in October, 1874, and in August 
I owned my own homestead. I had always 
hoped that I would go back home and see 
my father again, but it was not to be. The 
following January, 1875, he went to join the 
great majority. On the 21st day of April 
my brother came with me to Liverpool and 
saw me on board the Moravian. I was 
loaded down with letters of introduction 
from my friends, one of them being to the 
captain of the vessel and others to men of 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 23 

prominence in Canada. To all young men 
starting life, I want to say, throw away 
your letters of introduction and don't hang 
on to some one else to help you or push you 
along — one's relatives and friends can't 
make a man. It's himself. I may say that 
only one of the whole of those letters ever 
did me the slightest good. It was addressed 
to the captain of the ship and when I got on 
board I discovered that there was only one 
first class berth left and there were two of 
us had tickets for that berth. It was con- 
sequently up to the captain to decide who 
should have it, and I, having a letter from 
the owner of the vessel, naturally was 
awarded the berth. I had scarcely entered 
the cabin until I heard a man telling what a 
bad predicament he had been placed in. He 
had lost one arm and while he had bought 
a ticket for a first class berth he was com- 
pelled to go down a second companionway 
to a lower deck in order to get one. I im- 
mediately stepped out and asked him how it 
came that he had bought a first class ticket 
and had to take a second class berth, and 
he explained to me that somebody else had 
gotten the berth by having influence with 
the captain. I told him that I undoubtedly 
had the berth that he expected to get and 
as I was on my way to Canada to rough 
it, I might just as well begin now, and he 
was perfectly welcome to take my place in 
the first class berth. I little knew what a 



24 • AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

friend I was making by this act. It didn't 
make the slightest difference to me whether 
I slept above or below, but to him who had 
crossed the ocean many times and knew the 
rough seas of the Atlantic and the 
difficulties of climbing those narrow com- 
panionways of that old type of ship, it 
meant a great deal, and when I arrived in 
Quebec he invited me to his home in 
Montreal, and I was treated like a prince as 
long as I cared to stay there, which was 
but a short time. I wanted to get out into 
the back woods, out into the wild, and after 
staying a week I pushed on for my desti- 
nation, a little rocky village which appeared 
to be the jumping off place of the earth, 
about sixty miles north of Lake Ontario. 
On my trip from Quebec to Montreal I had 
my first experience in a sleeping- car. They 
were very primitive affairs compared to the 
Pullman of today; you sat in the day coach 
until bed time and then gathered up your 
belongings to go into another car to sleep, 
except when some conductor wanted to see 
your ticket, then you were unceremoniously 
aroused, wondering where on earth you 
were and finally wake up enough to dig up 
a ticket. 

Having arrived at my destination I went 
to deliver another of these wonderful letters 
of introduction. I may say that it did me 
a little good, because the man to whom it 
was addressed owned a sawmill. He 



roosevelt's adversary 25 

asked me if I knew anything about work. 
I told him that I had seen men working in 
the fields in England but that I had never 
done a hard day's work in my life. "Well," 
he says, "how are you going to do it if you 
don't know how?" I told him that I didn't 
see where I would learn any younger. He 
said, "If you want to learn I will try and 
show you a thing or two." I didn't care 
much for the old man's demeanor, but in 
his gruff way he was very kind. He could 
outswear almost anybody I ever saw, and 
when he got angry he would throw his hat 
on the ground and jump on it. However, 
he took me down to the saw mill and showed 
me a man running around on logs in the 
mill pond with a pike pole in his hand. He 
asked me if I could swim and I told him 
that I had won the swimming prize at col- 
lege for the mile race. "Well," he said, 
"take hold of that pike pole and let us see 
you do what that man is doing. He will 
show you how to do it." With that he 
turned around and left me to my own de- 
vices. He did not offer to hire me or set 
me any particular work to do, but before 
leaving told me that when I got through at 
night to come up to the house. This kind 
of work just took my fancy exactly. I was 
like a young duck in the water. I took to 
riding a log with a pike pole in my hand 
like an old water man. The second day I 
was there the boss came down and watched 



26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

me for about half an hour, and he told me 
he would give me ten dollars a month to 
jack logs up the jack ladder. To say that 
I was pleased would not half express it. 
Never did a man or a boy start out in the 
world to earn his first dollar with a greater 
delight. I had no idea of the value of a 
dollar. All I had known up to this time 
was when my father wanted any money he 
sat down and wrote a check and there 
seemed to be no end to the supply. At this 
time I was living at the house with the boss, 
but I soon went out and hunted a boarding 
house for myself, and here again that 
destiny that shapes our end overtook me. 
It just so happened that the husband of the 
woman who had kept the boarding house 
was an old trapper, and the greatest delight 
of my life was to sit and listen to him telling 
of his life in the forest and on the lakes 
where he had spent it trapping, fishing and 
hunting. We became very friendly and as 
soon as I could I bought a canoe and a 
young lady undertook to teach me to paddle. 
This old trapper told me that if I ever got 
so that I could paddle a canoe, he probably 
would take me out with him trapping and 
hunting, but the majority of fellows that 
came out took so long learning to paddle 
and were so awkward in a canoe, that he 
didn't want any of them with him. How- 
ever, I proved an apt scholar. I made a 
few strokes with the paddle and quietly 



roosevelt's adversary 27 

rolled over into the water. I came up 
utterly unconcerned, took hold of the canoe 
and swam to shore. I took off my outside 
clothing and got into the canoe again in 
spite of warnings that if I didn't take care 
I would be drowned. I said, "I have either 
to learn to paddle or get drowned, that 
is a sure thing," and once again I essayed 
the paddling. The young lady said there 
was one thing I had to watch for; keep my 
knees solid on the bottom of the canoe and 
never to touch the gunwale. If the reader 
has ever been in a canoe learning to paddle, 
he will appreciate the difficulty when the 
canoe commences to wobble of keeping his 
hands from that particular spot. However, 
I made up my mind to do exactly as I was 
told, and I had a little eddy in the river near 
the canal where I used to paddle first on one 
side and then on the other but thought I 
never would learn to steer that canoe, for 
I could not understand how they could do 
it from one side of the boat with a single 
blade paddle. I was determined I was not 
going to be defeated, so I took a row boat 
and rowed down to the lake, towing my 
canoe where the water was fairly shoal, then 
stripped off my clothes and got into that 
canoe determined to paddle or drown. I 
was but a very short time in it till I got the 
nack. A friend in another canoe paddled 
around and around me showing me how 
to do it. All my spare time from this on 



ZS AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

was spent paddling, and finally I became so 
expert at it that I decided to try trolling for 
Muskalonge. I discovered that paddling a 
light canoe was a very different proposition 
to steering it just exactly where I wanted 
it over the fishing beds, but I bought a 
trolling line and started out on my maiden 
effort, and great was my pleasure when I 
felt the telegraph from the other end of the 
line, tug, tug, tug, and realized that I had 
hooked one of the gamiest fish in the fresh 
waters of Canada. I was a little bit afraid 
to pull it up to the canoe, for while it was 
comparatively a large one for an expert to 
handle, to me it was but a very frail craft 
as yet. However, I made up my mind that 
I was going to land that fish, so taking the 
line in my teeth, I undertook to paddle 
ashore, and when I got among the rushes so 
that the canoe would steady itself, I started 
to haul in my fish, and then the trouble 
commenced. The fish also had use for those 
same rushes and he darted in and out among 
them, tangling up my line in the most irre- 
trievable mess. I was afraid to lean over 
the canoe and yet I wanted that fish, and 
how to get it I didn't know. Presently I 
heard a voice say, "What in thunder are you 
doing in the reeds? Have you got a fish 
on?" and I told him I had but that my line 
was tangled up. He says, "Make for the 
clear water, don't let your fish get into the 
reeds." I replied, "My dear fellow, the 



roosevelt's adversary 29 

blooming thing is all twisted around the 
reeds already." "Well," says he, "can't you 
reach over and get him out?" I told him 
that I couldn't reach over without upset- 
ting the canoe. However, a happy thought 
struck me about this time. The fish was 
still fighting the line, so I knew he was 
well hooked. I decided to leave him where 
he was and I ran my canoe ashore, stripped 
off my clothes and waded out to disentangle 
my line. I finally got the line free and 
waded ashore towing my fish through the 
water. It is needless to say that the report 
of my fishing exploit reached town ahead of 
me and I was unmercifully guyed. How- 
ever, that did not deter me for a single in- 
stant. I got my fish and was a mighty 
tickled youth. All that summer I spent 
every bit of spare time I had trolling, and 
by the time the trapping season came I 
could paddle a canoe with the best of them. 
So proficient had I become that old Jim, 
the trapper, told me that he would be de- 
lighted to have me go with him. That 
ended my saw mill experience for that 
season. 

We started out in September with a camp 
outfit and some forty or fifty traps apiece, 
the intention being to trap muskrats all fall 
and as the weather got cooler and the mink 
fur became prime, we intended to turn our 
attention to the latter, which were then 
bringing from four to five dollars a pelt. 



30 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

This as my first experience under a tent, 
and from that day to this the canvas roof 
has been the most delightful home that I 
could ever live in. I remember well the 
day we started, our canoes loaded down 
with bedding, tent, traps, guns and ammu- 
nition, as we paddled side by side down 
through the lake to an island near the 
mouth of a creek which ran through a large 
marsh. Of all the beautiful spots to put 
your tent in, that island was the most ideal 
that I ever saw, surrounded on all sides by 
wild grapes, in the center a small oasis of 
thick turf, and enough drift wood on the 
shore to furnish fuel for winter. No sooner 
had we landed then I was initiated into the 
art of pitching a tent, and I certainly felt a 
stupid, awkward boy at the job. It is need- 
less to say that forty years afield have 
remedied that defect. As soon as we got 
everything ship-shape, we cut some willows 
for stakes for the traps. I might describe 
these willows so that any person seeing 
them sticking up in the marsh will recognize 
what they are. We trimmed the willows 
so that the ring on the trap would just slip 
down over the sharp hook that we left about 
half an inch long where we cut off the limbs. 
When the animal sprung the trap he would 
immediately jump into the water, the ring 
slipping down over these hooks would pre- 
vent its rising to the surface, as the sticks 
were driven top downwards. As I remem- 



roosevelt's adversary 31 

ber it today, I made a very stupid pupil. 
It seemed as if I could not catch on to the 
way of setting those traps. I had always 
been in the habit of putting my foot on the 
spring, and to set it on the gunwale of a 
canoe, especially when I had not got the art 
of holding a canoe very steady, was a diffi- 
cult proposition. However, I soon managed 
to accomplish the feat. We used to set the 
traps on a feed bed, pressing them down 
till the water covered them. The process 
was to sink the bed sufficiently under the 
water so that the trap's weight would hold 
it down. The rat coming to feed would 
climb on the bed, put his foot on the pan of 
the trap and immediately spring back into 
the deep water, dragging the trap with him 
when he sank to the bottom never to rise 
again. We caught an average of 40 to 50 
rats a night, having out between 90 and 100 
traps. We always made the rounds of our 
traps the last thing at night before it got 
dark, because ducks and mud hens would 
occasionally get into them, and the first 
thing in the morning we went around to 
gather our fur, and a fine musky bunch it 
was. The skins of the muskrat at that time 
were worth \2 l / 2 cents a piece, and aftei 
taking home our fur, the next thing was to 
learn to skin it and stretch it. Poor old 
Jim would skin about five rats to my one 
when we first started, but little by little I 
kept gaining on him and by the time we 



32 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

were at it a month it was hard to tell which 
could skin the fastest. Our method of 
skinning was different to that which is in 
vogue today, which is to split them up be- 
tween their hind legs and stretch them on a 
shingle. In those days we had nothing but 
willows to stretch them on and in order to 
do so we split them from the mouth along 
the breast as far down as the front legs and 
skinned the rat out through that hole. We 
then doubled the willow and pushed it into 
the skin, drawing the skin down tight on 
each side. We cut a small notch through 
the skin and the willow and this held it in 
position until it dried. As soon as the 
skinning of the rats was over they were 
hung up in the bushes to dry. The car- 
casses, except those we wished to make 
stew of, were thrown back into the lake. 
Some people may squirm at the idea of eat- 
ing a rat, but the hind quarter of a muskrat 
or a beaver, when the musk is properly taken 
out and when they are properly dressed, 
makes as gamey a stew as duck. We were 
by no means compelled to eat rat because 
ducks abounded and we could kill any quan- 
tity of them. The way we came to eat the 
rats, old Jim thought he would try and find 
out what kind of metal I was made of, and 
right there he could not suggest a propo- 
sition that I would not go up against. I 
have since tried skunk and as far as I can 
learn from Indians and others who have 



roosevelt's adversary 33 

been driven to eat the different animals that 
range the forest, there is nothing but the 
crow and the pine squirrel that are unpal- 
atable. I have known of many men who 
considered a rattle snake a relish, though I 
have not been in a position where I had 
to eat them and I never sampled them from 
choice, but if it was a case of starvation, I 
think a snake would look pretty good, as 
I fail to see where they differ from an eel, 
and those who have eaten them assure me 
that the flesh has the same flavor. A rat 
stewed with plenty of onions and vegetables 
with it, beats restaurant fare so far that I 
should require no coaxing at any time to 
repeat the dish I so often enjoyed. 

Not far from our camp there lived a very 
crusty old bachelor, a regular old hermit. 
He always refused to sell campers 
any vegetables and kept a pack of vicious 
dogs to protect his melon and corn patch 
from marauders. On Saturday nights a 
party of my young chums used to come 
down from the village and camp on the same 
island with us. One night we decided that 
we wanted some sweet corn. As we had 
been over several times and tried to buy 
some from old Sauerkraut, and being re- 
fused, we decided to take the law into our 
own hands and see if we could not get some, 
a rather risky proceeding, as he kept a 
double barrel shot gun always loaded, be- 
sides this bunch of vicious dogs. It is a 



34 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

well known fact that whenever boys cannot 
get anything, that certain thing they want 
the most, and this trait generally applies to 
boys of larger growth during the rest of 
their lives. No sooner had we decided that 
we wanted corn than we started with our 
canoes for the old man's corn patch. The 
beach was sandy and shelved at a slight 
angle down to the shore. We paddled 
along, never allowing a paddle to strike the 
gunwale or the slightest splash to drip from 
the end of the blade. The bows of our 
canoes finally grated on the sand and silently 
we slipped up inlto the corn patch. To 
break off these ears of corn without crack- 
ing required considerable dexterity, but 
not a dog barked and for aught we knew 
they might have all been dead. We slipped 
quietly back to our canoes when one of the 
boys suggested we might as well have a 
melon while we were at it. It is a well 
known fact that no melon ever tastes as good 
as the one that is swiped in the dark of the 
moon. By some stroke of good luck the 
fellow that went back for the melon got hold 
of a good one, large and dead ripe, but in 
carrying it to the canoe, the melon slipped 
from his grasp and fell with a rattle among 
the corn shucks. This alarmed the dogs 
instantly and the way we piled into those 
canoes and paddled for the island was not 
slow. We had not gone more than a hun- 
dred yards from the shore before the whole 



roosevelt's adversary 35 

yelping pack and the old man with his shot 
gun were after us. He hollered to us to 
come back, cursed us roundly, and when we 
jeered him, fired two shots at us. The shots 
fell harmlessly in the water and splashed 
around the canoe. We were too far away 
for him to injure us. We got back to the 
island and immediately had a fine corn 
roasting, and was ever a sweeter morsel 
tasted than an ear of corn roasted over a 
camp fire. Whether it is that our appetites 
were whetted or that corn cooked on a camp 
fire is really better than any other, I am not 
prepared to say, but to this day I can always 
enjoy an ear of corn roasted on the coals. 

On one Saturday night I had been up to 
town for some provisions, I met a com- 
mercial traveler with whom I was well 
acquainted. He had to remain over Sunday 
in this God forsaken little village and was 
lamenting his misfortune, when I suggested 
that he come down to our camp with us, as 
several boys were coming down to spend 
the week end. He immediately acquiesced 
when I offered him the loan of my largest 
canoe, of course supposing he was a good 
paddler, but alas! he had more nerve than 
paddling lore. However, he started out 
with the rest of us and the canoe he was in 
was so steady that it was impossible for him 
to upset it. By paddling first on one side, 
then on the other, he managed to keep 
somewhere among the crowd, bumping first 



36 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

into one canoe then into another. Finally 
one of the boys took compassion on him 
and made fast to his painter. This at least 
enabled him to steer, and between the two 
of them they got down pretty near to the 
island. On the side of the island where they 
landed the water was quite deep. A log 
projected from the shore and by the side 
of this we would run our canoes, climb out 
on the log and drag the canoe ashore. As 
they neared the island my friend cast the 
commercial traveler loose and told him to 
follow him and be careful not to run his 
canoe against the log, which was partially 
submerged. He had seen the man preced- 
ing him paddle hard as he came ashore in 
order to run his canoe as far as possible up 
on the bank, and he, thinking to follow suit, 
gave an extra good stroke, ran the bow of 
his canoe up on the log and was gracefully 
tipped into the water. There was a skirmish 
to help him out and he certainly looked a 
beauty as he climbed out on the beach. 
There were no extra clothes in the crowd, 
but we had some blankets, so Mr. Traveler 
had to strip off and roll in a blanket. He 
seemed to be very much concerned for the 
safety of a roll of bills that he had in his 
pocket and wondered if the water would ruin 
them,. We assured him that they would be 
as easily dried as his clothes, and what was 
our amazement to see him deliberately 
spread out almost a thousand dollars in 



roosevelt's adversary 37 

greenbacks on the floor of the tent. Prob- 
ably no tent ever had so rich a carpet. We 
made a large fire and dried his clothes, and 
the warmth of it dried the bills in the tent. 
He facetiously remarked that it had taken 
the starch out of his shirt but not out of 
him by a long shot. He was as game a 
sport as ever went to camp with me, the life 
of the whole crowd and a most enjoyable 
companion. 

We had just put out a few mink traps 
around the edge of the lake and along the 
creek, and I was looking forward to quite a 
fall's sport, when word came to me that I 
was wanted to take a clerkship in a shanty 
for the winter. I did not altogether relish 
the idea, because I had made up my mind 
to trap and hunt, but one was a certainty 
and the other was not, and while I had made 
pretty good wages trapping so far I was 
now starting out on a line that took more 
skill, for while anybody can trap rats it takes 
a good trapper to go after otter and mink. 
Old Jim was loath to lose my company as 
we had gotten to be very close companions 
and lived agreeably together, but he advised 
me to go into the woods to the shanty be- 
cause there I would have an opportunity to 
kill lots of deer, possibly some moose and 
bear. The work would be easy and while 
the pay was light, I was assured three 
square meals a day. So taking his advice 
I gathered up my traps, stored my canoes 



38 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

and climbed aboard a wagon bound for the 
other side of nowhere. All I knew was that 
I was to go some 250 miles into the forest. 
I traveled a short distance on the wagon 
sitting on some bedding, but I finally de- 
cided that I preferred my feet to bumping 
over stumps, logs and a corduroy road. We 
had not gone far along the road when I spied 
some rough grouse, known in that country 
as partridge. I immediately commenced 
shooting and we had a nice stew that night 
out of the birds that we killed, which were 
very abundant along the trail. Rough and 
rocky as it was the journey at last came to 
an end. We reached the shanty, the first 
I had ever seen. It was made of logs 
notched at the corners and laid one above 
the other and the roof was made of split 
poles with a groove cut down them. Two 
of these grooved poles lay on their backs 
with the round side down and the other one 
fitted into the grooves of these two with the 
round side up, making a fairly water tight 
roof. The chinks between the logs were 
packed with a moss gathered in the marsh. 
In the center of the roof was practically an- 
other building which narrowed into the top 
and formed a chimney. Inside the center of 
the chimney and below this was the caboose, 
four logs notched at the corners and filled 
in with dirt. On the top of this was a log 
fire and we never lacked for heat. Around 
this the cook did his work and the pork and 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 39 

beans that were cooked around that fire 
furnished a food that has no equal for men 
to work on. Many a deer did I kill while 
in that shanty and no matter how tastily 
the cook might prepare it, those French- 
Canadian woodsmen preferred their fat pork. 
The bunks were made double and two tiers 
of these bunks extended around the shanty. 
The foreman and I slept together and I don't 
know that I ever rested more comfortably 
in the best feather bed that I ever slept in. 
The work was all novel to me, and I really 
had very little to do. When the logs were 
skidded I measured and branded them, then 
after that was done I had nothing further 
to do until another batch of logs were 
skidded for me, except to eat and enjoy my- 
self. Towards the end of January a serious 
accident happened in the camp. A large 
tree slipped from a sapling and fell across 
a man's thigh, breaking the bone about six 
inches above the knee. Such a thing would 
be a small matter in a settlement where 
there are hospitals and doctors, but we were 
250 miles from the nearest human habita- 
tion, other than shanties, and a doctor would 
have charged a dollar a mile both ways. As 
the poor axeman was only getting $22.00 a 
month he could ill afford to pay a doctor 
to come out to him, and to put him in a 
sleigh and send him over that rocky road 
would have meant certain death. I volun- 
teered to do the best I could to set his leg 



40 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

and thus save him the expense or the risk 
of his life, and he gratefully accepted. I 
knew nothing of surgery more than I ac- 
quired at college from seeing the doctors 
set legs that were broken on the foot ball 
field, but I felt satisfied that the exercise of 
a little common sense would reduce that 
fracture and save the man's life. No sur- 
geon ever had more willing assistance than 
I, and we made a box from hewn sticks and 
tied the man's leg into it. We improvised 
a pulley at the foot of his bunk and piled 
weights on to it sufficient to hold the leg 
a trifle longer than the other one. This 
man was as carefully nursed by those rough 
shanty men with all our crude appliances as 
any patient in a hospital today, and in 
March, when he was about to leave the 
shanty on a pair of improvised crutches, 
he said that he was going to have just as 
good a leg as he ever had. I remained in 
the shanty and went down with the logs on 
the drive. When I reached the settlement 
one of the first men to greet me was Fran- 
cois with the broken leg. I asked him which 
was the broken leg and he said if he didn't 
know he could nevjer tell the difference. 
When the ice broke up in the spring we had 
a cabin built on a raft of square timber and 
this was towed across the lake into the 
river. An exciting trip indeed was that 
journey down through those rapids over 
rocks that imperiled the safety of our frail 



roosevelt's adversary 41 

raft. The raft was held together by pegs 
driven through poles across the timbers and 
if one of those timbers should strike a rock 
it was good-bye to our cabin. Our canoes, 
outfit and bedding would have gone to the 
bottom of the river. As it was it got a 
good many bumps but that I never felt be- 
cause I was as often riding a log with a pike 
pole in my hand as I was on the raft. I had 
many a ducking on that trip in the cold icy 
water, but it never seemed to affect me in- 
juriously. I had one or two escapes of 
being struck by logs when I was in the 
water, but having always been something 
of a fatalist, I reasoned that if my time had 
come to die in the water between logs, it 
would save me from being hung later or 
coming to some other untimely end. I 
used to vary the monotony of the river run- 
ning, and also our larder, by going ashore 
with my gun. There were large numbers 
of ruffed grouse, one could hear them 
drumming on the logs and occasionally we 
would see an old deer roaming around, com- 
ing down to drink. Of course it was out of 
season but in those days we had no seasons 
for game. Necessity knows no law and 
whenever a man wanted meat he took it in. 
We finally reached the mill in July and al- 
most the first person I met when the raft 
arrived at the mill was the man whose leg 
I had set, and no surgeon had a more grate- 
ful patient. I rested up for a week or two 



42 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

and visited with my friends. During the 
winter I had acquired such a habit of speak- 
ing nothing but French that when I came 
out and my friends asked me a question in 
English I would answer them in that 
language, much to their disgust. It is as- 
tonishing how easily a man can forget his 
mother tongue, or at least the habit of using 
it. It took me some weeks before I would 
think to reply to a man in English when 
asked a question, and even to this day the 
French expressions will often come to my 
tongue unwittingly. 

That summer I joined a young fellow and 
we opened a store, an entirely new experi- 
ence for me. My father furnished me some 
money to put into the business, but being 
inexperienced and having to depend entirely 
upon my partner, who gambled and drank, 
the business soon went to the dogs, and I 
went out again that fall with my old friend 
Jim, the trapper. After trapping as we did 
the fall before for rats, in September we 
made up our minds that we would travel 
about 300 miles north to an uninhabited sec- 
tion of the country and a lake, where he had 
been hunting before. That was a very ex- 
citing time for me. We took our canoes 
wherever we could, sometimes portaging 
around rapids and paddling against strong 
streams. We rarely pitched a tent on the 
entire trip, as we were in a hurry to reach 
the trapping grounds. We had no accidents 



roosevelt's adversary 43 

nor any startling adventures on our trip up. 
The place that Jim selected for us to go and 
camp was near a beaver dam between two 
lakes, an ideal spot for a hunter's cabin. 
It seemed as if all the deer in the country 
passed back and forth between those two 
lakes, it was so tracked up. Here we 
pitched our tent, but as we were to put in 
the whole winter there, a tent was out of 
the question, so we decided to build a little 
cabin. We cut down logs about six inches 
through, some of them quite close to the 
ground where we intended to build, and it 
was no time till we had a little shack 12 by 
14 feet. The poles for the door were split 
and hewn ; the roof was made as previously 
described for the lumber shanty, with the 
exception that we had no caboose in the 
middle of the cabin. We found some very 
fine clay close to one of the lakes which we 
kneaded with grass, just as one would knead 
dough, and made it in similarly shaped 
loaves or bricks, and built a fireplace and 
chimney in the corner. It was one of the 
cutest little cabins that ever two men en- 
tered. It was about the 10th of October 
when we completed it, then we imme- 
diately set to work getting out a line of 
traps, but as the lakes did not freeze for 
two or three weeks later, we were compelled 
to use our canoes. We found a great num- 
ber of beaver on this ground and several 
otter slides. We were doing very well 



44 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

with beaver, rats, mink and otter in spite of 
being limited to a small area, until the win- 
ter set in. Every morning we would start 
out on our rounds and gather our furs, when 
time permitted; skinning them where we 
caught them and taking home just the pelts. 
Occasionally we would take home the hind 
quarters of a beaver or two for a stew, and 
a mighty tasty stew it made, especially when 
there was a piece of the tail put in. After 
we had supper we spent the evening fleshing 
and stretching our skins, which would leave 
a strong, musky smell in the cabin. We 
had no candles or coal oil. We made a 
"spit" out of deer tallow and that furnished 
a glimmer of light, but most of our light 
we got from fat pine knots which we burned 
in the fire. We would take an axe, roll 
over some old pine log that was decayed, 
split the fat knots out of it and break them 
up into small pieces, and while one was 
skinning and fleshing, the other would feed 
the fuel on the fire, giving a bright light all 
over the cabin. Our bunk in the corner was 
two logs, piled one on the other at the side, 
and the interior filled with beaver meadow 
hay. In these days of mattresses and 
feather beds, one might think that that was 
an uncomfortable bed, but I would give a 
great deal to get such good nights' rest as 
I had then. I have hunted and trapped with 
a good many companions during my 40 years 
on the frontier, but never did I meet a more 



roosevelt's adversary 45 

congenial companion than old Jim. From 
the time we left the settlement until we re- 
turned to it the following March we never 
had a cross word. We had several extra- 
ordinary incidents during the winter. 

One morning we awoke hearing a rat tat 
tat just outside, and we could not imagine 
what the rattling was. There was a rattle 
of bones and then it would stop and once 
again the stamping of feet. It was barely 
daylight, but we opened the door and peeped 
out to see what was going on, and here we 
saw two monarchs of the glen, old Virginia 
bucks, fighting to the death. One could 
imagine one of them coming along the path 
and meeting the other, telling him to get 
out of the road, the other fellow saying, "I 
have just as much right here as you have," 
the first one replying, "Well, I will show 
you." Wild animals are very little different 
from human beings. They are forever as- 
serting their rights and trying to make good 
by force of arms. These two evidently had 
decided to fight it out, and the snow all 
around the door was covered with froth and 
blood. They took no notice of us when we 
(looked out upon them, and we watched 
them fight as eagerly as any Spaniard ever 
watched a bull fight. We stood with rifle 
in hand, shivering in the cold, frosty morn- 
ing, only about half clad, watching those 
two deer struggling for their lives. At last 
the larger one, for one was considerably 



46 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

larger than the other, slipped past the 
other's guard and drove his brown antler 
into the flank of his adversary. The smaller 
deer immediately fell, and before he could 
rise again, I threw my rifle to my shoulder 
and broke the neck of the victor. Jim did 
the same for the one that was down, and we 
had two fat, fine carcasses without having 
to carry them in. 

It was our custom to walk out to the lake 
and when we reached it to separate, each 
taking a different course. We had out a 
string of traps covering some twenty miles 
and it was quite an undertaking to make the 
round trip in a day. We would each go 
around about ten miles and meet at a cer- 
tain point, and if we had a few pelts or large 
animals we usually skinned them on the 
spot, as the carcasses were too heavy to 
carry. Sometimes the sun would be sinking 
and we would have to carry our game in 
whole and skin it at the camp. One morn- 
ing, shortly after parting in the early fall, 
before the bears had holed up for the winter, 
I was walking along the shore of the lake 
when^ looking through a thicket toward the 
end of a log where I had a trap, I saw a 
black bear lying down licking his paw. I 
immediately turned back and went to Jim. 
He laughed at me when I told him I thought 
I had a bear in my mink trap. The trap had 
been set in a hollow log, and the bear, when 
reaching in for the bait, had got the trap 



roosevelt's adversary 47 

caught around one of his toes, and when we 
returned to the spot he was still licking that 
paw. Jim, being the most experienced 
woodsman, raised his old muzzle loading 
rifle and planted a bullet into the bear's ear. 
The first spasmodic jerk of his leg he shook 
off the trap, and the only way we could ac- 
count for his having remained so long with 
it on was that he must have been suffering 
from the pressure of it, and every step he 
took hurt him that much more. The trap 
was only fastened to a light clog so that he 
had no difficulty in moving it wherever he 
wanted to go, but he had not gone more than 
twenty feet from where it was set. That 
day we didn't get any fur at all. We spent 
our time fleshing the bear skin and cutting 
up and carrying home our meat. It was a 
bad plan to leave our traps over a day, be- 
cause there were many wolverines in that 
country and the rascals had a great fashion 
of making the rounds of our traps for us. 
It would make no difference whether it was 
a $5.00 mink or a $1.50 fox, he would just 
as soon tear one as the other. I have known 
a wolverine to follow the trail of a trapper 
and turn over trap after trap without getting 
caught. They seem to know exactly when 
there is a bait where the trap should be and 
can avoid it without any trouble. They 
would follow our snow shoe tracks later on 
in the winter, and in that way two of them 
met their death. By setting two large No. 



48 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

4 traps, one on each side of a log, with a 
clog attached to them, when Mr. Wolverine 
came along in the trail he would climb the 
log and drop off on the other side and find 
himself fast in a double spring trap. If the 
trap had been made fast, he is so power- 
ful that he undoubtedly would have gotten 
away, and I have known one to drag a heavy 
clog for many miles. 

The only living beings we saw during the 
winter were some shanty men that were 
taking out logs near the head of the upper 
Ottawa River. When we had more deer 
than we knew what to do with, we would 
put one on to a tobaggan that we had made 
and haul it over to this shanty where we 
would trade it for $2.00 worth of pork or 
beans. The winter wore along, and by 
spring we had accumulated nearly a thous- 
and dollars worth of fur, and when the 
break up came the question was how were 
we going to get out. We had our canoes 
there, but canoes were useless owing to the 
ice and we could not leave them because 
we might need them before we got back, 
so we made two toboggans, pretty rough 
affairs made only with an axe, but they 
would at least slide over the snow with our 
packs until the snow left us. These we 
woud haul as far as we could during the 
day and then go back and bring up our 
canoes. We were obliged to use our tent to 
cover up our furs as they must be protected 



roosevelt's adversary 49 

from wet no matter how wet we got our- 
selves. We would turn our canoes over, 
cut some boughs and make a bed under- 
neath the canoe at night. Sometimes we 
were wet for days at a time, but we had 
no means of drying our clothes or remedy- 
ing matters, so there was nothing to do but 
make the best of it and we were mighty 
glad when we got to the river and 
found the ice had broken up sufficiently to 
get back into a canoe. In this way we 
were enabled to get down into a settlement 
but we could not cross the lakes, as they 
had not yet broken up, so leaving our 
canoes at the first settler's house, we en- 
gaged him with his oxen to take us down to 
our destination. Here we once more 
reached civilization, if we could call this 
little jumping off place by such a name. 
During my stay at this little town I had 
made friends with some pretty fast com- 
pany and while I had made some money 
myself, yet it was nothing like sufficient 
for my extravagant habits. I had learned 
to play cards and drink whiskey with the 
best of them, and many a night have I sat 
far into the night and gone home poorer 
in the morning. An incident happened at 
this time that made me look myself square- 
ly in the face. I woke up one morning af- 
ter one of these nights of debauch and I 
said to myself, "Young man, you are hitting 
the high road to the devil, cut it out." I 



50 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

knew it was impossible for me to cut it out 
while living in that village and among those 
companions and yet to leave there I had to 
leave all my most valued treasures, my 
canoes, my hounds, my traps, and worse 
than all the hunting ground that I had en- 
joyed so often, but I made up my mind that 
something had to be done, so I sold out 
everything and got on the boat headed for 
Port Hope on Lake Ontario. I made up 
my mind here to settle down to business, 
and for a few months I stuck steadily to it. 
I got employment without any trouble as 
bookkeeper in a grocery store and soon be- 
came proficient in the business, so much 
so that the boss intrusted me largely with 
the buying for the establishment. I re- 
mained with him during the summer and 
everything ran pretty smoothly, but the 
more I saw of the man I was working for the 
more I despised him. He made a great pre- 
tense of being very religious, but would 
stoop to small things to cheat his customers. 
He would fly into a passion if we failed to 
keep water continually around the sugar 
barrels, for in those days there were three 
grades of sugar kept underneath the 
counter, and if they were allowed to dry 
out, the barrels seldom held out in their 
weights, and it was astonishing the amount 
of water that a barrel of sugar would absorb 
only sprinkled on the floor underneath it. 
One day I saw him giving a short measure to 



roosevelt's adversary 51 

a customer, and thinking he had made a mis- 
take, I mentioned the matter. He flew into 
a passion and told me to mind my own busi- 
ness. One word led to another and I told 
him that I certainly would mind my own 
business in the future, that I was not going 
to be a party to the underhanded tricks that 
were going on in that store. I promptly left 
him and he spent the entire day following 
in going from store to store and blacklisting 
me. I had not saved up much money and 
had previously written to my father, when 
he asked me what I was doing with the 
money he sent me and told him that if he 
could not send me money without asking 
questions about it he could keep it. So that 
source of supply was shut off and I have 
always looked back on that as being one of 
the best things that ever happened to me. 
Day by day I tramped the town seeking 
work, meeting rebuff after rebuff, until I 
got two weeks in arrears of my board. The 
lady with whom I was boarding told me that 
she couldn't afford to keep me any longer. 
I told her that I would get work that day 
somewhere and I struck out for the docks. 
All the old drunkards and toughs of the 
town infested this place and when a vessel 
would come in they would load her for so 
much an hour and immediately repair to 
the barroom and drink up what they had 
made. The wages usually ran from 15c. 
to 75c. an hour, according to the number 



52 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

of schooners awaiting to be loaded, as they 
all wanted to get away as rapidly as pos- 
sible. Shoving lumber from a dock all day 
is certainly hard work, but I was making 
some money and I realized that if I could 
take a little money to the boarding house 
mistress that night I could get a new lease 
on my room. I happened to strike a lucky 
day and our wages had been running on an 
average of about 40c. an hour and I had 
got in some nine hours that day. As I was 
only paying $3.00 a week for my board, I 
was able to pay up one week's board with 
that one day's work and had enough left 
to buy a dinner pail, which I had the land- 
lady fill the next morning and returned to 
the dock. Of all the experiences I had 
among working people, that was the most 
varied. On this dock were all classes and 
conditions of men and women. The men 
who came down to earn enough to get 
liquor were the very lowest possible class, 
the scum of humanity, and they simply 
worked long enough, some of them, to get 
all the whiskey they could get, and men and 
women would lie down behind lumber piles 
in a drunken debauch, the women hanging 
around for the sake of the whiskey they got. 
These old duffers called me the tony kid, 
because I would not join them in their 
sprees. I had other use for my money. I 
remained at this work for several weeks, 
my swell friends around town continually 



. roosevelt's adversary 53 

asking me where I was working, and I as 
continually evading the answer. I would tell 
them that I was having a good time taking 
the world easy, whereas, as a matter of fact, 
I was putting in some of the hardest work 
I ever did in my life. I could always de- 
pend upon getting work whenever a vessel 
came in because the masters of the vessels 
knew that I would not go off and get drunk. 
So sometimes when there was only one or 
two vessels came into the port during the 
day I always got 15, 20 and sometimes 25 
cents an hour. Some of the masters, real- 
izing that I was dependable, would give 
me 25 cents and tell me not to say anything 
about it. Other days when a fair wind 
would come and all the schooners wanted 
to take advantage of it with a large number 
of vessels in, we have had as high as $1.25 
an hour, but when the vessels were paying 
those wages the news flew like wild fire up 
town and the people who would flock down 
to the dock to look for work was astonish- 
ing. OVie day while I was at work there, 
a friend of mine came down to see about 
one of the schooners that was loaded. 
Whenever I saw anybody like that coming 
down I always dodged and hid behind a 
lumber pile until they disappeared, but this 
day we were getting such big wages that I 
was intent only upon the money I was get- 
ting and never noticed him until he said, 
"Hello, Jim, what are you doing down 



54 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

here?" The cat was out of the bag. I 
knew very well that if he told it up town 
where he had seen me working there were 
no more invitations for me, but he happened 
to be a mighty good fellow, and when I told 
him how I had been used by the grocer I 
worked for and that I just simply had to do 
something, he said, "Well, you come over to 
my office and I will find you work that will 
keep you going all winter." He had large 
grain warehouses and set me to work buy- 
ing barley for him. As the lake was about 
to freeze up this was a perfect godsend to 
me, because the "dock walloping" was pretty 
nearly at an end. I remained with him for 
several weeks in the fall, and in October I 
met a colonel who was getting recruits for 
the Northwest mounted police, and this, of 
course, appealed to my gypsy nature. 

Before we leave Port Hope I must tell of 
one or two experiences I had while staying 
there. Always the same dare devil nature, 
I had to see how near I could come to get- 
ting into the clutches of the police without 
quite doing it. One time the chief of police 
came into our store where I was working 
and a discussion arose regarding a man who 
had been masquerading as a woman. This 
man was a murderer and had been teaching 
school dressed up as a girl for two years. 
The old chief of police was particularly 
proud of his force and said that he would 
like to see a man walk the streets of that 



roosevelt's adversary 55 

town dressed as a woman and his policemen 
not pick him up within twenty-four hours. 
After he had left the store I made the re- 
mark that the old man made me very tired, 
always blowing about his police force, and 
immediately an argument arose as to 
whether it was possible to traverse the 
streets in woman's garb. I offered to bet 
a fellow that I could walk from the top of 
one hill to the top of another and back again, 
a distance of about four or five miles there 
and back, and never be detected. He im- 
mediately covered my bet of $100.00 and 
we drew up an agreement as to the way it 
was to be carried out. It must be remem- 
bered that in those days women's clothes 
could not be bought ready made, and I had 
not counted upon this when I made the bet. 
However, I had some girl friends who were 
willing to aid me, and they undertook to 
make and lend clothes to fit me. I don't 
think I shall ever forget the day that I got 
into those corsets. It seemed as if I didn't 
get one good breath from the time I got into 
them to the time I got out of them. On 
the day appointed we started out, the two 
girls and myself, and it was hard to tell one 
from the other, we were dressed so alike. 
About every few steps that we took, the 
girls, one on each side, would pull at my 
sleeve and say, "don't take such long steps, 
you will give us away." When we got down 
to the bottom of the first hill we stood gaz- 



56 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

ing into the store windows and there met 
a policeman to whom I daily gave cigars. 
One of the girls knew him and introduced 
me as her cousin from another town. I 
smiled as sweetly as I knew how, bowed, 
but said nothing. The girls did all the talk- 
ing, and I stood there with beads of 
perspiration oozing out of me for fear this 
fellow would recognize me. I realized then 
how many things a veil hides, for if I had 
not worn one I am sure he would have 
known me. We soon left and went on our 
journey, and it seemed as if everybody I 
knew in town was out on the street that day. 
We could only take a few steps without 
meeting somebody that I knew. However, 
they passed me one after another without a 
sign of recognition, and there were a few of 
them who would have thought it a mighty 
good joke to see me run in by the police. 
We made the trip in about four hours, and I 
never walked four hours again in such tor- 
ture. All I wanted to do was to get back 
to the house as fast as possible and get out 
of those clothes. All things come to an end 
and so did that journey, and the young man 
who had made the bet walked up and told 
the stake holder to pass over the money. I 
had agreed to divide my share with the girls, 
and I certainly think they earned it. As 
soon as we got into the house I said, "Oh, 
girls, help me to get out of these duds." 
"Why, no," they said, "there is no hurry 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 57 

about it. We have asked a few friends to 
come up tonight and have a little dance and 
we expect to be short of girls." And those 
miserable girls kept me in those clothes 
until three o'clock the next morning. My 
ribs were sore for a week afterwards. 

On Lake Ontario there was an old man 
who used to put out nets for lake trout. He 
was considered pretty cranky and the boys 
about the town used to tease him and, of 
course, we. had to do our share. He had a 
marine telescope with which he used to 
watch anyone sailing near his nets at a 
distance of some two or three miles. Three 
of us boys had built a flat bottomed sail boat 
which was very speedy and it was our de- 
light when we went sailing to sail straight 
for his buoy and make believe we were over- 
hauling his nets. We would immediately see 
his big white sail go up and see him heading 
for us. He naturally thought we were 
stealing his fish, for which we hadn't a par- 
ticle of use. As soon as we saw him 
coming we made for the shore and he would 
try to overtake us in order to examine our 
boat and see that we had not got any of his 
fish. We could sail where he would run 
aground, and it was our dodge to get in as 
near a shoal as possible. The old man, in 
the excitement of the chase, would forget 
where he was sailing, and the first thing he 
knew the bow of his boat would grate on 
the mud, much to our delight. We would 



58 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

turn tail and sail home, leaving him stuck 
there. He tried to get the police to arrest 
us, but it was perfectly useless because we 
never had anything to be arrested for. We 
would haul up. a fish so that he could see 
it with his glass, and he naturally supposed 
it was in one of our lockers, but we never 
took one. 

Orders came for us to be ready to march 
to the great Northwest on the 8th of Octo- 
ber, and my friends came down to the depot 
and saw us off. We reached Toronto that 
night and on the 10th started on our north- 
ward march for Fort Garry, now the thriving 
city of Winnipeg. I was considerably bet- 
ter fitted for such a march than some of the 
men who had enlisted, as my experience in 
the woods trapping had taught me how to 
take care of myself in all weathers. The 
first part of our journey was easy. We went 
by rail to Collingwood and from there we 
took a steamer across Lake Superior, and 
Oh! such a seasick crowd. Once again my 
past experiences came to my rescue and I 
was one of the very few who were able to 
eat my meals during the trip. I have 
crossed the Atlantic and sailed the North 
Sea, but I never saw a meaner water than 
Lake Superior is when she is stormy. We 
reached Prince Arthur's Landing near Silver 
Islet, and there we heard of the first use of 
nitroglycerine. A large mining company at 
that time was working the Silver Islet Mines 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 59 

and they had sent their manager, an old 
Scotchman, a can of this new explosive and 
asked him to give it a careful test. The re- 
port of the test was related to us. The old 
man went away up above the town, had 
two men dig a hole ten feet deep, carefully 
lowered the can of nitroglycerine into it, 
called all hands to safety and touched the 
button. An explosion followed that shook 
the earth for miles around, and the canny 
Scot wrote back to the company saying, "I 
think that nitro-glycerine is an excellent 
thing to move earth in large quantities but 
I don't think it would work in the mine/' 

From here on our hardships began. By 
portage and boat we journeyed through 
Lake Shebandowan and over the rest of the 
Dawson route covered by General Wolsley, 
when he went to the relief of Fort Garry 
during the first Riel rebellion. When we 
reached Rainy Lake, we found a small 
steamer, and my surprise was great when I 
discovered in the purser an old chum from 
the first tpwn I had visited when I reached 
Canada. When we got to Rainy River we 
found the Indians engaged in a little dog 
feast. We were all cordially invited to 
share in this dainty, but as prairie chickens 
were exceedingly abundant around there, I 
don't think that anybody accepted their 
generous offer. Doubtless there are times 
when dog meat looks pretty good to a man, 
but we had not reached that stage of the 



60 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

game. While the pork in our commissary 
had become pretty strong and the hard-tack 
decidedly moldy, yet we had v)aried the 
rations, for the officers had carried along 
several boxes of beef for their own table and 
by some "strange accident" in unloadingthis 
beef the boxes would be dropped and the 
odor from the campfire at night certainly did 
not smell like pork. In addition to these 
boxes of beef they had some large kegs of 
whiskey, which they took especial care to 
watch over, but ninety men are pretty hard 
to watch. On one portage it was raining 
very hard and we all crawled down into the 
hold of a scow and were towed across the 
lake by voyagers, and when we reached the 
other side of the lake in the impenetrable 
darkness of that scow the whiskey in the 
last keg had miraculously turned to water. 
Great was the wrath of the officers, and 
threats of the court marshal, etc., was made, 
but they had little fear for us, for were we 
not policemen and not soldiers? 

At Fort Francis on Rainy River stood 
another steamer for the passage to the north- 
west angle of the Lake of the Woods. 
When one thinks of the wild state of the lake 
in those days and that now the islands are 
covered with summer homes of the wealthy 
people of Winnipeg, one can hardly realize 
that more than a generation has passed 
away since we crossed it. We reached the 
north-west angle, and the hardest work of 



roosevelt's adversary 61 

the trip began. The ground was frozen just 
sufficiently to cut your shoes and legs wher- 
ever you went through, and between cor- 
duroy roads and frozen hummocks, we all 
began to get lame. The second morning 
we were unable to get our boots on. Our 
feet were swollen and cut and the boots 
were wet, and many of us tore up our clothes 
and wrapped our feet in them to protect 
them from ice and frozen mud. It was a 
painful tramp and a cold one. At last Point 
du Chien was reached and the snow was 
falling thick enough so that we were able to 
take sleighs from there to St. Boniface, 
where we arrived about six o'clock in the 
evening of November 2d, having been 
twenty-three days on the trip from Toronto. 
That day at noon the Red River had frozen 
over, and as it was freezing at night about 
40 below zero, two of the men undertook to 
go over to Fort Garry, crossing that quarter 
of a mile of water on ice that was barely an 
inch thick. They took 16 ft. flooring, and 
one in each hand, they crawled across that 
ice and returned with eight bottles of rum, 
40 above proof, from the Hudson Bay Fort. 
We were housed that night in an old barn 
belonging to the Roman Catholic bishop, 
and a bunch of tired men curled up on 
piles of straw on the ground. The rum 
was passed around and for a short time 
we felt warm after taking a swallow of it, 
but as the effect of it wore off later in the 



62 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

night we realized what it meant when they 
afterwards told us that to take liquor in 
the winter in that country was almost like 
committing suicide. Many a poor fellow 
has gone to his death from the mistaken idea 
that if he only had some whiskey with him 
he would keep warm. The following morn- 
ing we all arose stiff and cold and wishing 
ourselves back on the shores of Lake On- 
tario or some other warmer place, but after 
having breakfast, which tasted pretty good 
after the moldy pork and musty hard-tack 
that we had been "enjoying" previously, 
we all felt in a good humor. The sun 
shone brightly and we had our first taste 
of 40 below zero weather. One of the larg- 
est men that Winnipeg has ever known, the 
Honorable James McKay, came across that 
ice to greet us and we wondered how it was 
possible for one night's ice to carry such a 
ponderous weight, but we afterwards 
learned that an inch and a half of ice in the 
fall was tougher and stronger than four feet 
in the spring. A number of cow hides were 
brought across by half-breeds and our 
baggage was loaded on to these hides and 
we were told not to gather in too compact 
a body but to spread out all over the ice, 
and with long ropes attached to these hides 
we pulled all our baggage across the river. 
It certainly was a novel experience, using 
dried cow hides for sleighs, but in after 
years I have many times tied a horse to the 



roosevelt's adversary 63 

neck of a steer hide by his tail and driven 
for miles across the prairie in this unique 
sled, often taking the whole family out on 
it. We reached Fort Garry shore and im- 
mediately made our way up to the barracks 
where several companies of infantry were 
quartered. In those days any stranger 
coming into the country was like getting 
a budget of news from the outside world, 
and we met many people whose friends we 
knew in the East. The boys at the Fort 
made us right welcome and we sat down to 
one good square meal at noon that day. As 
soon as the meal was over we were hustled 
into sleighs and started on a 22 mile journey 
for lower Fort Garry, where the mounted 
police were to be quartered that winter. 
That was one of the hardest winters that I 
ever put in the Northwest. The ther- 
mometer sometimes registered 55 to 56 
degrees below zero. Our winter was put in 
with drills, riding bucking bronchos, caring 
for our horses and amusing ourselves around 
the barracks. There were one or two calls 
for our services during the entire winter 
and the writer was one of those who volun- 
teered to go on one of those trips. We were 
out after men who were selling whiskey to 
Indians and we knew that they were armed 
with the latest repeating rifles, which, while 
an obsolete weapon now, was vastly su- 
perior to the single shot carbine that we 
were carrying. Our weapon was not only 



64 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

inaccurate but only fired one shot, while 
they could fire sixteen and at a short range 
their weapons were very effective. These 
men were said to be fortified where we could 
only approach them over glare ice, and the 
night before we went to take them I don't 
think any man of the five that were in the 
party slept a wink. As the question was 
not how dangerous, but when duty called 
there was no question as to whether we 
were going to certain death, the simple mat- 
ter as we had been sent out to take those 
men and it was do or die. By some good 
luck they had heard of our coming. We 
had passed an old fisherman the day before 
and he had undoubtedly given them warn- 
ing. All we had to do was spill their 
whiskey on the ground and return as fast 
as we could to the Fort. We had been gone 
five days and had dug holes in the snow to 
sleep in at one camp. When we reached 
the Fort with our cheeks frozen and the tips 
of our noses and ears, we learned that the 
thermometer had not gone above 50 below 
during our absence and that old lower Fort 
Garry is the coldest spot on the Red River. 
We played cards and gambled and took the 
world generally pretty easy until spring. 
In April the commanding officer came 
around with a paper for us to sign chang- 
ing us from the police force to a military 
organization, being under the Queen's regu- 
lations. I objected strongly to this, and 



Roosevelt's adversary 65 

several others, hearing my objection, fol- 
lowed suit and refused to continue in the 
force, except under the original conditions 
which we enlisted. We were told that un- 
less we signed this paper there was only 
one alternative for us, namely, to get out of 
the force. A number of us had had about 
all we wanted of it and took the opportunity 
to leave. I had had some friends come up 
that spring from Ontario with the intention 
of joining the force, but I advised them to 
go out and take up a homestead, and as 
soon as I got out of the force I followed 
them to where they were. I left the force 
in April, 1874, and from that day on I was 
practically my own boss. I had saved some 
money while I was in the force and I bought 
a span of horses, a mower and rake. I went 
out on the prairies cutting hay for the set- 
tlers, and in August of that year I took up 
my first homestead, verifying the words that 
I had told my father before I left England, 
that before I was twenty-one I would be my 
own master. 

At this time Manitoba was a sportsman's 
paradise. The country was alive with 
ducks, geese, prairie chickens, deer and 
moose, not mentioning innumerable black 
bear. My first winter on the place was my 
first real experience at keeping bach alone ; 
though I can hardly say alone, because I 
had plenty of company all the time, but it 
was always with other bachelors who came 



66 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

and paid me extended visits. I had not been 
long in the house before a friend of mine, 
who was a clergyman of the Church of Eng- 
land and lived at St. John's College at Win- 
nipeg, suggested that if he could get a place 
to hold services he would come out every 
two weeks. I told him that he needn't lack 
for a place for services, that I had one large 
room that I thought would accommodate all 
the congregation he could muster. So he 
drove out early one Saturday and went 
around among the people and told them that 
he was going to hold a service there, and 
from that time on he held services regularly 
every two weeks, much to the amusement of 
the whole countryside. I rigged up an im- 
promptu pulpit for him out of boxes and 
tables and he would come over every Sat- 
urday afternoon and stay with me over 
Saturday night, hold services the next 
morning at eleven o'clock and return to 
Winnipeg afterwards. This, of course, en- 
tailed my getting his Sunday dinner, and 
while he was preaching I was basting the 
ducks or the roast, whatever I might have 
in the oven, boiling the potatoes and pre- 
paring to satisfy the inner man before he 
would start on his journey. On one occa- 
sion the bishop accompanied him on one of 
his journeys and there were two or three 
baptisms and some confirmations held in my 
house. I didn't object at all to the ser- 
vices, in fact I rather enjoyed having them 



Roosevelt's adversary 67 

there, but I did object to having to clean 
up the house always after the crowd got 
away. We used to have from twenty-five 
to forty people, and naturally they brought 
in more or less dirt with them. I made up 
my mind that something had to be done, 
that there had to be a change, so I pro- 
posed that we build a little log church, 
seeing that we had such a large congre- 
gation. In order to do so it was necessary 
to raise some money and I volunteered to 
go down and see a lady who I knew was in 
the habit of getting up concerts and enter- 
tainments for such purposes. I was most 
cordially greeted by the lady when I went 
into the house as soon as she learned my 
mission. She was quite enthusiastic over 
the project and told me that she would ren- 
der me every assistance in her power. 
While I was talking to this lady there was 
another, a young lady, sitting in the room 
by the fire who was decidedly more attrac- 
tive to me than the lady I was talking to 
at the time, although I had had no intro- 
duction. When I started from home I 
turned to one of my bachelor companions 
who had volunteered to look after my cattle 
while I should go out on this trip, and I 
told him that I was tired of this baching 
business and I proposed to get a wife. As 
a matter of fact, I had as much thought of 
seeing anybody or getting married as the 
bachelor friend I was leaving had, but 



68 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

"there is a destiny that shapes our end, 
rough hew it as we may," and I little 
thought it was to be my destiny to meet the 
woman on that trip who was to be my com- 
panion for nearly forty years. I did not 
speak to the young lady, merely bowing to 
her as I left the room, but the keen eyed 
matron with whom I had been discussing 
church matters had suddenly discovered 
that Cupid had got in his work, and she told 
the young lady after I left, "My dear, that 
young man is smitten with you." The 
young lady remarked that it was perfectly 
absurd, that she hadn't even spoken to me, 
which was indeed true, but those dark eyes 
had done their deadly work and Cupid's dart 
had gone straight home. I was to come 
back on the following Saturday and report 
progress, and true to my promise I arrived 
in time for luncheon. I was cordially in- 
vited to remain over Sunday. It is 
unnecessary to enter into further details, as 
I said before, Cupid had done his work and 
done it well and before I left there on Tues- 
day morning I was engaged to be married 
to this young lady, who has made me a faith- 
ful wife and followed my wanderings all 
over the frontier. I was too dead in earnest 
to fool around long and we decided that 
there was no use having a long engagement 
and although we had only met on the 10th 
of March for the first time, we were married 
on the 27th of the following May. Wise 



roosevelt's adversary 69 

acre friends all said, ''Marry in haste and re- 
pent at your leisure," but to the present time 
I have never had leisure to repent, but pos- 
sibly my better half may have not been so 
fortunate so she keeps it a secret. I didn't 
tell my bachelor friends anything - about it 
when I returned, but by some extraordinary 
means the news soon leaked out that there 
was something doing, but when I began 
having the house refitted there was no longer 
any guess about it. 

On the 23d of May an old hunting com- 
panion came to me. He was a half-breed, 
one of the noblest specimens of manhood I 
ever knew. He said, "Boy Jim, we will 
soon have no more hunting together, come 
and let's go kill some waivies," as the 
arctic or snow goose is known in that coun- 
try. I thought it would be a pretty nice 
thing to take some geese in with me when 
I went to get married, so I promptly agreed, 
and on the night of the 23d of May, old 
Jock and I slept out beside a willow bush 
and waited for the dawn to commence one 
of the greatest slaughters of geese that I 
ever had in all my hunting experience. The 
weather was fine and the geese began to fly 
at daylight. After the sun rose we could 
see one unbroken line of geese as far as the 
eye could trace them, all winding their way 
to the Arctic Circle for nesting. About 
8 o'clock in the morning the wind suddenly 
changed to the northeast and a sleet and 



70 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 

snowstorm came up, making, as every 
hunter will appreciate, the most ideal 
weather for such sport. The geese didn't 
like to face the storm and commenced to 
drop into our decoys till the large marsh in 
which we were hunting, some 20 miles 
square, looked more like a snow bank than 
anything else. Wherever these large flocks 
of white geese would alight they gave the 
ground the appearance of having large snow 
drifts on it and the noise they made was 
almost deafening. We shot there all day 
long and when night came I wanted to go 
home, but with old Jock it was a matter of 
business, the more geese he got the more 
half dollars he got out of it. He knew that 
I couldn't use them and that I never sold 
any game, consequently he would get all we 
killed, except the few I wanted to take to 
Winnipeg with me. It was a bright night 
with magnificent aurora so we proposed to 
curl up in our blinds and sleep there, but 
sleep was out of the question. The noise 
that those geese made would have aroused 
a corpse. Every now and then they would 
fly over our decoys looking like black balls 
in the dim light. We would shoot at them 
and hear them splash in the water as they 
fell and in an instant the whole place, at 
the discharge of the guns, would be one 
screaming mass of geese. We would then 
shoot and shoot and shoot until we would 
drive them away again when they would 



roosevelt's adversary 71 

settle at the farthest end of the marsh. This 
was repeated at intervals during the night. 
We would shoot a little while, talk for a 
while and then Jock would say, "Boy, we 
had better have a cup of tea." We would 
then adjourn to the willow bush, kindle a 
fire, make a pot of tea in a little copper ket- 
tle, smoke for a while, then curl up in our 
blankets again and try to sleep. We had 
a poor chance to sleep though and it was a 
relief when day dawned once more, bright 
and clear. We knew that the geese would 
very soon start on their northward flight 
again. The wind was fair and the sun was 
just coming up when it seemed as if by one 
consent they all took wing. We killed a 
few and in a few minutes the sport was all 
ended. We decided that it was time to go 
home, and after gathering up our game and 
cleaning them we counted 186 geese. We 
loaded up our cart with as many as we could 
get into it, caching the rest, and started 
home. The following day I started in on 
the most eventful day of my life, taking with 
me a load of geese and other game. Before 
I left I had made arrangements with my 
neighbor to straighten up the house the best 
way possible and prepare something for the 
bride on her return, as we were to come right 
out to the ranch after the ceremony. Up 
to this time I had been using tin ware en- 
tirely for my meals, tin cups, tin plates, iron 
knives, but in preparation for the coming of 



72 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

the bride I had ordered a stock of china, 
which had not yet arrived when I left but 
which I expected to be there before I got 
back on the evening of the 27th. However, 
the fates decreed such was not to be the case. 
We were married at noon on the 27th day 
of May, 1875, and the girl who had been 
one of the belles of all the parties turned 
her back on society forever. It took us two 
and one-half hours to drive to the log cabin 
that was to be our home, a matter of twenty 
miles, and when we got in I was dismayed 
to find that my freight had not yet arrived, 
but spread out on a little green table were 
the tin cups, dishes and the steel knives, 
some beautiful home-made bread and two 
fine, fat, roasted geese. Never shall I for- 
get the delight with which I sat down to that 
meal. I presume a man can only experi- 
ence once in a life time the joys of such a 
possession, and words fail to express it. It 
is astonishing after a man gets married how 
his bachelor friends will drop off. From 
having a constant stream of hangers on at 
the house we scarcely saw anybody. Our 
neighbors were all busy like ourselves, im- 
proving their little places and struggling to 
make a living, and the struggle in those days 
was a hard one. For several years the 
grasshoppers took everything, but when the 
harvests did begin to come in they were 
abundant. Exciting events were few and 
far between, but about every year our little 



roosevelt's adversary 73 

family increased, and when we had three, 
two girls and a boy, we sold the home we 
had gone into at first and got more land and 
a better house, and here the rest of our 
family were born, with the exception of one 
who came later in life. We had had eleven 
years of this cold Manitoba weather, where 
winter sets in in October and lasted until 
May and we decided that we would like a 
warmer climate. It was here we made the 
mistake of our lives, for in order to obtain 
it we went to Texas, losing what money we 
had and our health as well. It was a fatal 
mistake and one that no northern man 
should ever make. A man who has lived 
in those cold climates is ill adapted for the 
climates of the south, and it usually ruins 
his health. We remained in Texas but six 
months and in that time the entire family 
was taken down sick, some with pneumonia 
and all with malarial fever from which the 
writer has never recovered. We were ad- 
vised to take a wagon and drive across the 
Indian Territory to the Ozark Mountains. 
So purchasing a pair of mules and a wagon 
and procuring a tent I started out for a 
summer camping trip, and certainly it is a 
most delightful journey to go by wagon 
through that paradise of flowers and vege- 
tation, beautiful rippling streams of clear 
water with abundance of fuel and feed for 
the stock. One could hardly imagine a 
more beautiful country for camping out in. 



74 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

With our northern ideas of bathing we took 
advantage of every clear stream we came 
to, little thinking that we were doing the 
very worst thing that was possible. Those 
poor little children would come out of that 
water and shake with the ague until their 
hair would stand on end. We caught num- 
berless fish and lots of quail along the road 
and one place we learned a novel way 
of fishing. A railroad embankment had 
changed the course of a river and as the 
streams aie small in that section of the 
country, instead of bridging it twice they 
would simply cut a new channel for the 
stream, thereby leaving an elbow of the old 
river. This place was said to be full of 
buffalo fish, and in the evening a large herd 
of cattle came down to drink and these 
cattle were driven up and down in this 
elbow, making it so muddy that the fish 
were driven to the top of the river and all 
we had to do was just rake them in. It 
seemed as if the whole countryside was 
down there fishing, but it had one objection, 
not only would the fish come to the top of 
the water, but a large number of moccasin 
snakes as well. We were camping on the 
bank of this pool and my wife had two of 
the babies lying on a blanket with the fever 
after the chill had passed off. I heard a 
scream and ran back to camp to find that a 
large moccasin snake, frightened by the 
cattle, had come up out of the water and 



roosevelt's adversary 75 

glided around our camp fire between the 
two little children and the fire. My wife 
at all times had a holy horror of snakes, and 
seeing the children in peril, naturally made 
the mother afraid. That country is full of 
reptiles of all kinds. We came upon a man 
one day who had killed two large rattle 
snakes. They were both over six feet long 
and over three inches in diameter, the dia- 
mond back type of rattler. Wherever we 
would camp we would find tarantulas, and 
if there were any logs about we would gen- 
erally find centipedes. I saw there the 
largest centipede that I ever saw or heard 
of, and it has been one long regret that I 
did not preserve it. I held it down under a 
stick on a log and the breadth of the scales 
of its back were over an inch, and when its 
legs were extended its reach must have been 
nearly five inches. At the time I was not 
aware that that was a large specimen. I 
thought that there were lots more like it, 
but I have never yet seen or heard of one 
of such prodigious size. 

We had abundance of quail as we jour- 
neyed along but the one thing that I longed 
most to see were the turkeys that I had 
heard so much about. One day when driv- 
ing along by a corn field, we noticed a flock 
of turkeys sitting on a fence and they 
allowed us to approach within a few feet of 
them. I had just remarked that I wished 
those were wild turkeys. What a splendid 



76 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

shot I could have had as they sat on the top 
of the rail fence craning their necks and 
looking at the wagon lumbering along. 
There was a house at a short distance ahead 
and I naturally supposed that the housewife 
was the owner of those turkeys, and it was 
not until they took wing and flew off into the 
timber that I realized we had missed one 
of the daintiest tid-bits of our trip. It was 
very amusing to see the natives of this part 
of the country. Wherever we would camp 
they would come down to visit us, and the 
men would sit on their heels and talk by 
the hour together. They usually had about 
two garments on them, a pair of ragged 
trousers that were hanging in shreds below 
the knees, and a shirt with sleeves, in 
like condition, but happier people I don't 
think I ever saw. They didn't seem to have 
a care. If you would ask a person today 
how they were, it is ten chances to one they 
would tell you that they were either going 
to have a chill or just gotten over one, or 
else had one due for the next day. They 
seemed to have no higher ambition in the 
world than to get out into the woods and 
kill a razor back hog. We had the pleasure 
of seeing one of these animals dressed. 
They hunted around till they found one they 
thought big enough and then shot it. They 
immediately built a fire in the woods just 
where the animal fell, and picking it up by 
the forelegs and the hindlegs, two men 



roosevelt's adversary 77 

would swing it backwards and forwards 
over the fire until the coarse bristles that 
these hogs had were all singed off. It was 
then disemboweled and taken home. The 
next proceeding was to start to the mill 
with a sack of corn across the front of the 
saddle or probably bare back, and return 
later with a bag of meal. A few eggs 
would be sent to the store and traded for 
sugar and tea, for which they received the 
enormous price of 4 cents per dozen. The 
sum of their happiness was now complete. 
Corn pone, bacon and tea is all that a moun- 
tain Arkansan needs to make him happy. 

We reached Fayetteville in August and 
here I was taken down with a sickness that 
lasted three months and from which I never 
expected to recover. The doctor told me 
that if ever I got well enough to drive to 
the station I should go north as fast as 
possible or I would certainly die in that 
climate. Finally I was able to get a neigh- 
bor to drive me down to town, and here I 
sold our little bunch of stock, consisting of 
two mules, wagon and harness, pony and a 
cow. This cow we had picked up along the 
road in order that the children might have 
milk. As soon as I had sold these things 
I went to the station to buy my ticket to 
St. Paul, and was dismayed to find that it 
took nearly all the money I had left, but it 
was a desperate chance and I made up my 
mind to get on the train anyway, so I bought 



78 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

two tickets and a half to carry myself, wife 
and six children. I was trembling when the 
conductor came around and I handed him 
my tickets. He looked at me for a minute 
or two and finally said, "You don't think 
you can take six children on a half ticket, 
do you?" The whole family was pretty 
small but it was a hard proposition to make 
a man believe that they were all under five 
years of age but one, and I decided not to 
make the attempt. I told him that I had 
spent all the money I had with the excep- 
tion of about $3.00 and I needed that to buy 
food for them on the way up. I explained 
to him that I was under the doctor's order 
to immediately start back north or die, and 
as I weighed only 120 lbs. it didn't require 
much to convince him. He passed along 
and said he would see me as he came back, 
and when he returned I told him that the 
only thing that I saw for him to do was to 
put off such of the children that he thought 
could not ride. He looked at me for a min- 
ute or two and then remarked that as far 
as he went they could all ride and he further 
arranged with the conductor that took us 
on from St. Louis to see that we should all 
ride to St. Paul. One has to go through 
such an experience as this to realize what 
it means to get back to the north, flat broke, 
and only thankful that you are alive. I 
wanted to go still farther north but as my 
little funds were reduced to less than $3.00 



roosevelt's adversary 79 

it was out of the question for me to buy a 
ticket, but through the kindness of the 
president of the G. N. Railway we were 
given a pass and so reached our destination 
on the second day of November, 1885, in 
a snowstorm and the thermometer that 
night at 40 below zero. We were 
strangers, knew nobody in the little village, 
and all we had in our pocket was some $2.25. 
It is such experiences as these that makes 
one realize what a good world we are living 
in. The first man I met as I stepped off 
the train was the Presbyterian minister and 
he saw my weakened condition. I was then 
only three days off a bed of fever. He 
stopped me on the street and asked what 
was the matter with me, and when I told 
him he suggested that we go back to the 
fire in the station, where I had left my wife 
and children. He thought that was about 
as hard a proposition as he ever ran up 
against, to see a man coming into a coun- 
try weighing 120 lbs., whose normal weight 
was nearly 200 lbs., and with six children on 
his hands and $2.25 in his pocket. The 
marvel of it all was that the mother had 
borne up during all this trying ordeal, but 
the three days and two nights of a sleep- 
less journey had brought her to the verge 
of a collapse. Something had to be done 
and done quickly as the afternoon was wear- 
ing on, and I learned from this minister 
of a house that was vacant belonging to an 



80 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

old lady who lived out in the country. Her 
son-in-law worked in a printing office in 
the village and to him this good Samaritan 
took me. He made no objection to our 
going into the house and gave us the key. 
I was told where a new stove was upset out 
of a wagon and broken and was lying by this 
minister's fence. He told me that it would 
make heat at least but it might not bake, 
but how was I to get that stove? An 
Englishman appeared on the scene who had 
a team and he immediately enlisted his ser- 
vices to help me draw the stove to the house. 
On our way for the stove I discovered some 
stove pipes underneath some steps and I 
tried my best to find out who they belonged 
to; I could not, and as we came back with 
the stove I threw them into the wagon, 
leaving word where they could be found. 
By the time I had got back to the house and 
had the stove inside I was nearly all in ; I 
turned to my wife and said, "Girlie, let's 
die," the first and only time in my life that 
I was willing to give up. The plucky little 
woman said, "No, we must fight for our chil- 
dren." The children at this time were all 
curled up in the bed clothes on the feather 
bed on the floor, for we had brought our 
bedding and baggage with us. As soon as 
my wife rose to put up the stove pipes this 
roused me too, and I made another effort. 
We had just got the stove up and sent over 
to the neighbor's to borrow an armful of 



roosevelt's adversary 81 

wood when the lady next door, who had 
learned of our condition, came to us with a 
tray of fried rabbit, tea and toast. I have 
always thought that that tray of food saved 
our lives, and if all the blessings we have 
wished her have been her lot she certainly 
had never lacked for anything in this world. 
Things at this time looked pretty black but 
the blackest cloud has a silver lining and so 
we found. At that time it looked very hard, 
but taken in their right light such experi- 
ences do us a great deal of good. We 
learned at this time many lessons, principal- 
ly among them the value of a dollar, and we 
also learned that this is a pretty good old 
world we live in, full of the milk of human 
kindness. It is no trouble for any of us 
to have friends in abundance when we have 
a pocketful of shining gold but the number 
of friends that were raised up to us in our 
hour of affliction made us realize how much 
such friendship should be prized. My 
strength was slowly returning, and after 
we had been there about three weeks I made 
up my mind that something had to be done. 
We had offered some of our trinkets and 
jewelry as security for groceries but they 
were as promptly refused and we were given 
all the credit we needed. I noticed in mov- 
ing about the town that there were a large 
number of Scandinavians there who were 
unable to read, write or speak the English 
language, except very brokenly, and one 



82 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

day I suggested to one of them that they 
would have a much better chance in Amer- 
ica if they knew more about the language. 
He replied that they would gladly learn 
but there was no one to teach them. I 
told them that if they would rent a hall or 
a room, make some rough tables and benches 
and get some lamps, that I would teach 
them two hours every evening for five 
cents a lesson each, thus placing- it within 
'the means of the poorest of them. My 
school opened most auspiciously. I had 
thirty-five pupils on the opening night, 
who I taught all winter. Every night 
when they came they would drop a nickel 
in my hat and I already began to feel as if 
I was in the millionaire class. Our wealth 
only goes by comparison, and from nothing 
to $1.65 a day was certainly a jump to 
affluence. As I began to get stronger, I 
thought I would reach out a little farther, 
and while sitting in one of the stores one 
day I noticed a merchant going over his 
books and I saw a very pitiful condition of 
bookkeeping. As a matter of fact his books 
or accounts had not been made up for nine 
or ten years, and he had no more idea what 
he was worth than the man who was work- 
ing for him, and not any of them would 
have guessed within several thousand dol- 
lars. His customers were in like condition. 
They would come in and make a purchase 
of goods, have it charged to their account 



roosevelt's adversary 83 

and possibly pay something on that account 
every time they came in. As long as they 
made some payments their credit was good. 
I told this merchant that he ought to have 
his books made up. He said he would but 
he couldn't afford to send to St. Paul for 
a bookkeeper. I asked him what he would 
give me to make up his books for him, and 
thinking he was making a very mag- 
nanimous offer, he told me that if it would 
not take very long he would give me $2.50 
a day. I told him that in my enfeebled 
condition I didn't think I could work a day 
but I would come to him for 25 cents an 
hour and he paid me for just as many half 
hours as I worked. I have made up many 
a set of books, but such a tangled, con- 
glomeration of figures it has never been my 
misfortune to run across. Between the 
merchant, his clerk and his customers I 
managed to slowly get the matter straight- 
ened out, and accounts that were outlawed 
for years I got the customers to renew by 
giving their "notes." They were all hon- 
est men and would pay if they had the 
money, so it was not a difficult matter to 
get them to sign notes for the account. In 
this way I collected some $9,000.00 for the 
man that he never could have collected 
through the courts. When I completed his 
balance sheet he was amazed to find that 
he was worth something like $20,000, and he 
immediately made preparations of disposing 



84 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

of his business and leaving for the old 
country. His generosity was of a very 
peculiar type. I had saved him or made for 
him the matter of some $9,000 that he never 
could have collected in the world, and he 
"generously" gave me 25 cents an hour. 
However, I was gaining strength and some 
days I made as much as $4.00 together with 
my night school, and I thought it was time 
we were getting into a more comfortable 
house, for the one we had been in since we 
came there in November was so full of 
holes that the snow drifted in and every 
morning we had to thaw out the bread 
before we could get breakfast, or cut it with 
the axe. When I started out to build this 
little house I discovered how many friends 
I had in that town. Some of my Masonic 
friends, knowing of the struggles, chipped 
in together and made up a nice purse for 
me, but the thing that pleased me most and 
touched me most deeply during all our ex- 
periences there was the fact that one night 
at my night school I had some extra pupils 
come and was surprised to see forty men 
instead of thirty-five, and each as he came in 
walked to my hat and instead of as usual 
throwing down a nickel with a ring into 
the hat they laid it carefully in the bottom 
so that there was no sound. I thought 
from their looks that there was something 
strange going on, but I had no idea what it 
was. I had one young man, who I was 



roosevelt's adversary 85 

teaching bookkeeping, who came earlier 
than the rest, and I was busily engaged 
with him when the rest came in and it was 
some time after the school had opened that 
I wandered over to where my hat was and 
discovered forty silver dollars in it. I 
could scarcely find words to express the 
pleasure that I felt, not only did I need the 
forty dollars badly but it was nice to know 
that my efforts in their behalf had been ap- 
preciated. In addition to the money that 
was given to me, several parties turned out 
and helped me build my house, and while it 
was a little, small, one-roomed affair, it was 
snug and warm and we enjoyed a great deal 
of comfort in it the rest of the winter. We 
all have painful moments come to us in our 
lives but I think one of the hardest moments 
of my life was when I had to turn around 
one day to my family during this trying 
period and tell them that I was sorry I had 
nothing better for them to eat, and placed a 
slice of bread on each plate with a glass of 
water. One of them, a little brighter than 
the rest, spoke up and said, "It is quite a 
change to have bread without butter," and 
made a great joke of it. The real fact of 
the matter was, we all felt so thankful to 
think we had reached the north once again 
alive, that we forgot our trials in the matter 
of food and such little things as that, and the 
one thing of all others that sustains every- 
where is that "hope that springs eternal in 



86 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

the human breast." We had every con- 
fidence in ourselves and the kindness we 
received in that trying ordeal taught us that 
there was no danger of starvation at least. 
I continued keeping books and my night 
school until spring, then the boys had to go 
to work and the nights were too short to 
have any more school. During this period 
I had saved up enough money to purchase 
a cow, from which we had enough milk and 
butter for our family and sold cream and 
milk to the neighbors. I got odd jobs to 
do around the town, sometimes in the stores, 
sometimes cutting wood, and all the time 
regaining that most precious of all things, 
my health. I had had a lot of experience in 
ranching in Manitoba and I decided that 
the easiest place to get started again was 
out on a ranch, so I advertised in an eastern 
paper for a party to put in sheep with me 
on shares and was fortunate in getting a 
man. We moved out in August, some 
twenty miles east of the village, to the 
country that was then a frontier with here 
and there a scattering settler. We took our 
little band of four hundred sheep and 
pitched our tent like an Arab on the bank of 
a lake. Here we built a small log cabin 
about 14 by 20 feet. It had one good qual- 
ity, it was warm. The roof was covered 
with sod, and when it rained the rain would 
come seeping through in different places 
and after it got through raining outside it 



roosevelt's adversary 87 

still remained raining in the house because 
all the water that had soaked into the sod 
had to drip through. But the rainy season 
was almost over and during the winter it 
was perfectly dry and warm but pretty 
small quarters for eight people, even if six 
were small. Our troubles were not over by 
a long way. We had barely got settled in 
our new home when one of the worst prairie 
fires that ever visited Minnesota came down 
upon us. The ground was dry and parched 
after a very dry season, and not only did 
the grass burn on the surface but the roots 
remained burning long after the first snow 
fell in the winter. Thousands of acres of 
sod were turned into a foot deep of ashes 
and the foolish sheep would step into these 
places and burn their hoofs. We were re- 
duced to putting our sheep out on a swamp 
where the roots had not burned and where 
the warm days started the grass again, and 
between eating browse and this swamp 
grass they managed to exist until winter 
came on, but the wet ground caused them 
to contract epizotic catarrh and we saw our 
little bunch dwindling away under this 
dread disease during that long trying winter 
until we had but 52 left in the spring. In 
the early fall I went out with my rifle and 
killed some deer so that we had plenty of 
meat. I also caught an otter and some other 
fur, which brought us some money, but our 
needs were very pressing, and to add to all 



88 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

our other troubles on the 26th day of Janu- 
ary a little stranger arrived in our family. 
We were fourteen miles away from the near- 
est doctor and no one but a bachelor lived 
within five miles of us. I sent my little boy, 
then seven years old, to get this man to 
take the team and go for a doctor, not know- 
ing whether the little fellow would reach the 
cabin or not. It was impossible for me to 
leave my wife and I had to take the chance. 
However, he returned bringing the man 
with him and I immediately hitched up the 
team and he started on that fourteen mile 
drive across an open prairie where in many 
places the drifts were more than belly deep 
on the horses. He started on Monday 
morning and did not reach my house until 
Tuesday afternoon. The doctor told me 
that there was very small hope, but on the 
following day the little fellow arrived and 
for six long weeks, and they were long ones, 
I had to nurse my wife back to life with no 
more help than my little nine year old girl. 
We can look back now and laugh at the 
hardships that we have gone through, but 
when one thinks of having to feed and care 
for a bunch of sick sheep, to milk the cow, 
feed the horses, get up the wood to keep the 
house warm, to cook and wash and care for 
a sick mother and her baby and six little 
children and in addition to all this, have to 
take my gun and go out in the woods and 
hunt for grouse, because it was the only food 



roosevelt's adversary 89 

that my wife could eat, I often wonder as I 
look back on that time where the strength 
came from to do it. At the time these 
things seem very hard, but looking back on 
them at this time of life it was a good school 
and taught us lessons that we have never 
forgotten, and when we see a fellow being 
in like predicament, the only thing that 
troubles us is that our pocket book is not 
long enough. The next spring we moved 
to another place and built another house, 
of which the accompanying illustration gives 
some idea of the rude log cabin we lived in. 
Some people think it a great hardship to 
live on the frontier in a log cabin, but hav- 
ing experienced a fine mansion and the log 
cabin, I am prepared to state that the log 
cabins of America cover more thorough 
happiness than the brown stone fronts on 
Fifth Avenue, New York. "There is a tide 
in the affairs of man, which, taken at its ebb, 
leads on to fortune." It seems sometimes 
as though the wheel must go to the bottom 
of the hill before it takes a rebound, and 
sometimes it takes an awful long time get- 
ting a start up on the other side of the 
valley, but with us, after it did start, it 
seemed as if everything came our way. Our 
sheep prospered and in the fall of '87 I left 
the home to the little ones and my wife and 
took my tent and horse and started out on 
a hunt. It seemed to me that the country 
was swarming with game. All the barren 



90 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

holes that had been burned out the year 
before had grown up spontaneously with 
succulent weeds, and elk, deer and moose 
were luxuriating in them. Fortune followed 
me wherever I went. We had been very 
short of food all spring, and although a 
good hunter, it seemed as if I could not find 
the game when I needed it most. A bear 
that I had shot had got away from me and 
I needed its skin and the meat worse than 
I ever needed anything in my life, I think. 
The skin would have bought clothes for the 
little family and the meat would have furn- 
ished our table. However, on the second 
day of June I had ridden over to see the 
doctor, as I was not feeling well, and com- 
ing back I ran on to an old bull elk and from 
that day to the day we left Minnesota our 
larder was always abundantly supplied. 
That fall I killed enough elk and fur so that 
I sold, besides what we needed for our 
family, nearly $400 worth of meat. We not 
only had a grubstake and were able to get 
clothes and necessaries as well as many 
little comforts for the house, but I bought 
a bunch of heifers, which were destined to 
make us a nice herd of cows. The amount 
of hay we could stack was only limited by 
our capacity for cutting it. In fact, we felt 
like Monte Cristo when he breasted the 
waves and said, "The world is mine." That 
section of country around there certainly 
was ours. We had undisputed sway over 



roosevelt's adversary 91 

it. The more our sheep ate the grass, the 
richer and thicker it grew, and all we had 
to do was herd them during the summer 
and feed them plenty of good prairie hay in 
winter. Our stock did not increase from 
the fifty-two head fast enough to pay divi- 
dends, so the man who had put in the sheep 
decided to sell out. I felt certain that if 
he stayed with them they would win out 
and I wanted very much to keep them but 
I did not know how to get them as all I 
had were the few heifers and the cow I had 
bought in Hallock with her calves. I 
thought and planned and finally decided to 
go to a man who I had met but a few times. 
I stated the case to him and asked him to 
endorse a note for me. Nerve! Well, yes, 
but desperate conditions require nerve, and 
my nerve won out. I offered him every- 
thing I had and the stock I was buying as 
security, but that fine old fellow said, "If 
I could not trust you without security, I 
would not endorse it for you," but knowing 
the great uncertainty of life I had the bill 
of sale drawn up so that if I should die he 
would be safe. Bless his dear old heart, 
when I offered it to him he was quite angry 
and I have the mortgage yet as a keepsake. 
In two years I sold enough sheep, wool and 
cows to take up all my indebtedness and 
leave me a balance in the bank. Every year 
I took out hunters and so did not have to 
sell any stock for home expenses and in ad- 



92 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

dition I made some pocket money writing 
for magazines and trapping near home dur- 
ing the winter. People were just beginning 
to appreciate the beautiful fur of the Amer- 
ican sable, alias skunk, and the price like 
the odor was steadily rising, so as they were 
very plentiful I not only saved my chickens 
but reaped a harvest by killing them. My 
wife would render out the oil, and that also 
brought a good price. By making a little 
money in this way at every turn we were 
on the road to affluence. My wife was suf- 
fering from asthma and the doctor said, 
"Don't stay another winter, get to the 
mountains." This was in the spring of '92. 
I had no trouble in finding buyers for my 
fine stock of sheep that I had bred up till 
they were the finest bunch of Cotswolds in 
Northern Minnesota, but I did not like part- 
ing with them when we were doing so well. 
My wife's health came first and it also gave 
me an opportunity to get near schools, some- 
thing I had long been wishing for as the 
children only had lessons at home, which 
is not satisfactory because we had no time 
in the day and at night they were too sleepy. 
I had been in correspondence with my old 
friend, Bill Root, the founder with Bill Nye 
of the Laramie Boomerang, and he boomed 
Laramie as the only spot on earth worth 
living in, so to Laramie we went in spite of 
the strongest protest from our little five 
year old American citizen. He declared he 



roosevelt's adversary 93 

would stay alone in Minnesota with the cat 
and we have often wondered if his vision 
was prophetic, as he was taken ill on Sher- 
man hill, that mountain with its 8,200 feet 
that has caused the death of scores who, like 
our little chap, succumbed to the altitude. 
Just after reaching Laramie I bought some 
cattle and was doing a good business trad- 
ing cattle and horses when the little fellow 
finally took to his bed, and the day after 
Thanksgiving I was badly kicked by a horse 
and went down beside him to have him die 
in my arms a few days later. With a 
broken leg, I went on crutches to bury him, 
and it was late in March, '93, before I was 
able to get about again and we were once 
more broke, with the exception of a few milk 
cows that barely supplied the necessaries 
of life. Our children had been going to 
school but I could get nothing to do near 
town, so in hopes of stopping the wheels 
before we completely reached the bottom of 
the hill again, rented a ranch some fifty-five 
miles in the country. I was busily engaged 
on the 18th of May, 1893, planting some 
potatoes when one of those wild wind 
storms so well known in the mountain 
states suddenly burst upon me and sand 
was blown into my eyes. I rushed into 
the house and used every method to reduce 
the pain, but without avail. On the second 
day my eyes were streaming with water 
and the sight almost gone owing to the in- 



94 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

flammation. I felt that I was going blind 
and would gladly have welcomed death in 
preference. I was naturally despondent at 
this time, after being laid up for a long win- 
ter, and my children did everything possible 
to cheer me up. My son, running in, told 
me there were some antelope just over the 
brow of the hill from the house and he urged 
me to go out and shoot them. I told him 
that it was useless for me to make the 
attempt because I could not see the sights 
on my rifle, but the pleadings of the whole 
family caused me to go along with the boy. 
Not only could I not see the sights on the 
rifle but barely see the rifle in my hand and 
it was pain to me to open my eyes at all, 
but just to please them I went along with 
him and he led me up over the hill, guiding 
my steps carefully. When we reached the 
top of the hill, he said, "There, don't you 
see the antelope?" I told him that I could 
not see anything but some white thing like 
a rock from where we were and the sun was 
shining brightly on this white rock and 
could see it but I could not see the antelope, 
though they were less than 200 yards away. 
However, I threw the gun to my shoulder 
just to please him and pulled the trigger. 
The bullet by some chance struck the rock 
and the antelope, hearing it, immediately 
rushed up the hill towards us. As we were 
lying among some rocks on the top of the 
hill they passed within about twenty-five 



roosevelt's adversary 95 

feet of us and I could see the moving bodies 
going by. I threw my rifle to my shoulder 
without attempting to look at the sights, 
fired, and to the delight of my son, brought 
down a young buck. I supposed then that 
that was the last shot that I would ever fire 
and as I write this the head of that buck 
looks down on me from the wall. It is need- 
less to narrate the struggles of that summer. 
Absolutely helpless and blind, I went to a 
hospital in Denver and was fortunate 
enough to have a good doctor, who saved 
one eye for me, but when he first saw them 
he gave me no hopes of ever seeing again. 
He sent me up to St. Luke's Hospital in 
Denver, and between the gentle care of the 
nurses and his clever treatment, we managed 
to save one eye, although I remained blind 
so that I could not see the moon until the 
21st day of September. On that day I was 
sitting out with my family enjoying the 
bright sunshine when I suddenly remarked 
to my wife, "What pretty little birds those 
are." She said, "Can you see those birds?" 
and it suddenly dawned on me that my sight 
had come back to me. It did not seem at 
all strange to me that I could see those 
birds. I felt as though a scale had fallen 
from my eyes, I was about to see once more. 
The first thing I thought of was my gun, 
and the following morning I was up bright 
and early. I started oft" up the gulch and 
it was not long until I ran across some sage 



96 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

chickens. I fired six shots and brought 
down six birds. I could not wait to go 
further. My delight was so great that I 
had to go back and tell the rest of them 
that they might rejoice with me. On my 
way back a rabbit jumped up, and as it ran 
away I knocked it over too. I presume that 
there was not a happier man in the state of 
Wyoming that day. I wanted to go around 
the country and tell everybody that I was 
able to see again. Only those who have 
been blind can appreciate for a single in- 
stant the true meaning of it. We may 
sympathize with a blind man and pity him 
that he is not enjoying the beauties of nature 
that we have, but to really appreciate his 
sufferings one must have gone through it 
himself to learn exactly how little life holds 
for a pair of sightless eyes. Once more our 
wheel that had been going down hill struck 
the bottom, and with the exception of hav- 
ing a few head of cattle and two or three 
horses, we were broke again, for I had spent 
everything to try and save my eyes. 

We passed an uneventful winter on this 
ranch, killing an occasional antelope and a 
good many ducks, and the following spring 
I decided that we had better get a ranch of 
our own, so with my youngest boy, I started 
out for the Big Horn Basin. It was a long 
trip but we found a place that seemed to 
fill all our requirements, although I knew 
it was going to be a difficult place to irri- 



frjtafi 




roosevelt's adversary 97 

gate, so the boy and I returned, packed up 
the family, and after driving about three 
weeks we reached the place we had chosen. 
I had bought the logs for a house, as shown 
in the accompanying illustration. We were 
a weary and tired lot when we reached here, 
having driven several days through a desert 
where there was nothing but a few alkali 
springs. We had to carry water from the 
Piatt River, and that had to be used very 
sparingly as it was only a small quantity. 
When any of the children required a drink 
they had to take the alkali water out of a 
quassia cup, the bitterness satisfying their 
thirst but keeping them from drinking very 
much of it. After traveling over eighty 
miles of this desert, we came to Bad Water, 
so called not because the water is bad, for 
it is such a clear mountain stream that it 
seemed as if we could wait there all day long 
and drink, but because it overflows and has 
drowned many. After crossing an alkali 
desert, one certainly appreciates good water. 
From here on to the ranch we had good feed 
for our stock, plenty of good water for our- 
selves and any quantity of fish, the very 
finest mountain trout. I remember one day 
my son and myself started out to go and get 
some fish for the family. After we had 
gone, the girls found some old lines that 
were lying around the wagon, and cutting 
a willow for themselves, started to fish, and 
great was our amazement when we returned 



98 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

for lunch to find that these girls had caught 
several large trout, much better than any- 
thing we had caught on our long tramp, 
and they had caught their's close to the 
wagon. We immediately set to work upon 
reaching the ranch and completed our cabin. 
Every night the boys and myself would 
grub sage brush and the girls would make 
bonfires of it. We were there only a few 
days when a fine buck deer walked down 
close to the house and one of the girls saw 
it go into a grove. As we were short of 
meat this was quite a godsend, for we didn't 
have time to hunt. Stationing my boy at 
a small opening near the grove, I went into 
the brush to drive it out to him and suc- 
ceeded so well that in a few minutes I heard 
a shot and the boy hollowing, "Dad, I've got 
him, I've got him." I never felt more 
pleased when I killed my own first deer than 
I did to see him get his, and to think that 
it was a large buck too pleased him still 
more. The accompanying illustration de- 
picts the delight of the boy better than 
words can tell. 

We cleared that fall an immense tract of 
sage brush, and everything seemed to be 
prospering with us. The deer were thick 
in the hills and we had an abundance of 
meat, and on the rich pastures of that valley 
our herd of cows did well. The following 
winter all hands started in to make the big 
dam, for without irrigation the place was 



roosevelt's adversary 99 

worthless. Everybody said that it was im- 
possible to put a dam in that river, but we 
built ours on the principle of the beaver, 
using brush and rocks and sod, laying the 
brush up stream just as the beaver does. 
As soon as we had the dam built and were 
sure that it would stick, my son and myself 
started in on the ditch. It was a heavy one 
to make, but before the garden began to 
dry up we had turned the water in, and 
there was great rejoicing, for that insured 
an abundance of vegetables for the winter. 
We had a magnificent soil and everything 
we planted seemed to do well. That fall I 
decided to take out hunters in the mountains, 
as there were lots of elk and deer and al- 
ways the possibility of a chance shot at a 
grizzly bear. There were also a number of 
mountain sheep in that section. As I had 
been writing for a number of years for the 
sporting journals, as soon as I advertised 
that I wanted a party to take out, I had no 
difficulty in getting them, and the accom- 
panying illustration shows the outfit that 
was required to care for them. By this 
means we were enabled to get our winter 
supplies and the "grub stake" seemed to be 
the grand idea. Some men would go out 
on the round up working for the big out- 
fits, others would go to the cities, but the 
one grand idea through everything was the 
grub stake for the following winter. Year 
after year our cattle increased and fortune 



100 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

was once more smiling on us when my dear 
old partner's health began to give way and 
a doctor who I had taken out hunting told 
me that if I wished to save her life I must 
take her away from that place, and above 
everything to take her where she could not 
have the cares and worry of a home. He 
said that nothing would do her more good 
than to camp out the entire season, so we 
sold our ranch and once more started to 
travel with a wagon. This time we had a 
pretty good outfit, taking along a consider- 
able bunch of horses. The girls rode most 
of the time and the mother and I drove in 
the covered wagon. When it would rain 
the girls donned a big slicker, and in one of 
the boy's hats with their hair tucked away 
in the crown, it was impossible to tell the 
boys from the girls. We spent the entire 
summer hunting, fishing, gathering flowers 
and drying meat. We lived entirely on wild 
game, which was so abundant that any even- 
ing upon going into camp, without any 
effort at all, I could go out and get one or 
two deer and be back to camp in less than 
an hour. We never wasted any of the meat, 
having lived among the Indians so many 
years we thoroughly understood the art of 
drying it, and we had meat at all times in all 
stages of curing. Sometimes the game 
wardens would come to our camp, but there 
was never anything in sight by which they 
could catch us. On this trip we had a very 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 101 

serious accident. We had a colt that was 
running off into every herd of wild horses 
he could find. My son had him in a corral 
one time and was roping him when the rope 
caught on the rail of a fence and the rail 
sprung back, striking my son across the 
face, breaking his cheek bones and lacerating 
his tongue in the most terrible manner. 
Such an accident as that is a bad business 
in the city, but when you are one hundred 
miles from nowhere and nothing to work 
with but warm water and such astringents 
as willow or cherry bark, it makes a very 
trying condition. The poor boy lay on the 
floor of the tent all night with the blood 
pouring from his mouth, and he was months 
before he was again able to eat a piece of 
solid food. 

I never saw such a profusion of mag- 
nificent wild flowers as we found near 
Hahns Peak. The wild columbine was in 
abundance and such a variety of colors. 
One of my daughters, who is a great lover 
of flowers, made a collection of nearly one 
hundred and fifty specimens. We varied 
the monotony of camp life by visits to the 
mines as we went by. One place near 
Columbine we saw some hydraulic mining 
being done and we realized how thoroughly 
that mode of mining destroyed the fishing, 
as it was almost impossible to catch any- 
thing from there down. It was, also, a great 
annoyance to the farmers, filling up the irri- 



102 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

gating ditches. At many places we met 
other travelers along the road, some out 
for the summer, some journeying for new 
homes. One old couple traveled all the way 
with us to Meeker, where we finally pulled 
in for the winter, my wife being fully re- 
stored to health, as we hoped. Everything 
was excitement in this little town when we 
reached it. We heard nothing but the talk 
of a coming railway, a dream by the way, 
that has not yet been fulfilled. In this 
place we passed an uneventful winter. I 
ran a photograph gallery and learned exactly 
what it meant to go up against the public 
in business. Many an amusing thing hap- 
pened in that gallery. Two women would 
come into the place, and after studying the 
different photographs, decided that they 
wanted a photograph made. The remarks 
would usually be in this wise, "Now, Mr. 
Man, we want something that is a good like- 
ness. We don't want something that has all 
the features touched out of it." I knew per- 
fectly well when some old woman all 
wrinkled made a remark of that kind that 
if I were to hand her a photograph just as 
the camera had reproduced it, she would 
immediately tell me that I didn't know how 
to take a picture. I remember one day two 
women coming in there and making just 
such a statement. I exposed the plate and 
told them that the proof would be ready for 
their inspection the next day. I purposely 



Roosevelt's adversary 103 

did not retouch it, and just as I supposed 
when I handed them the proof the old lady 
who had had her picture taken turned to her 
companion and vehemently denounced any 
man who would make such a caricature of 
her. Of course it would be an easy matter 
to tell her that the instruments did not lie 
and was just as she appeared before it when 
I made the exposure, but I would just as 
surely have lost a customer, so I merely told 
her to call again in a few days after it was 
retouched. When the old girl had gone out 
I told my retoucher to take out every line 
and wrinkle and turn that old lady of fifty- 
five into a girl of twenty as near as possible. 
She returned in a few days afterwards and 
was so delighted with the beautiful mis- 
representation that she ordered a dozen. I 
doubt if she ever looked as good as that 
picture made her when she was a young girl, 
but the grand idea was to please, and if 
they wanted something that was like some- 
body else and it pleased them, they were 
perfectly welcome to it. This town is 
situated on one of the most beautiful moun- 
tain streams of Colorado, but for some 
reason that had not been found out when 
we were there, the death rate was 
abnormally high and there was a great deal 
of sickness. All our children were taken 
ill there and my wife was very ill, so much 
so that the doctor advised me to repeat the 
trip of the year before. Our finances at 



104 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

this time had again reached a pretty low 
ebb but I had invested the money we sold 
our cattle for in land in this village and 
when we got ready to leave, I traded the 
land for horses and wagons, thinking that 
that would be enough when we once again 
got on to a ranch. This time we started 
out with two four-horse teams and a spring 
wagon, carrying a,ll our baggage in one 
wagon and our camp outfit and bedding in 
the wagon that my wife and I drove. This 
was just after the Spanish American War 
and we decided to pay our way along the 
trip by giving stereopticon shows. We had 
a small organ and some banjos and a guitar. 
In addition to the above outfit we had eleven 
horses, which the riders of the party drove. 
We had any amount of fun with our 
stereopticon. We would drive into a little 
settlement, get the school house and then 
someone would tell them there was to be a 
show. The cowboys would come in and 
the remarks that they would make was as 
good as a show itself. All those little set- 
tlements never saw a show of any kind, and 
consequently they were delighted to have 
the opportunity to come to us. Between 
giving shows and trading horses and hunt- 
ing we had quite an eventful trip. The first 
thing of any interest that happened on our 
journey was when we reached Four Mile, 
a place four miles below the Wyoming 
Boundary in Colorado. Here was a gold 



Roosevelt's adversary 105 

camp and rich placer diggings. At this 
little point we gave a show and were tied 
up two days in a snowstorm, and the whole 
family was highly entertained examining 
the mining plant under the guidance of the 
proprietor. We traveled along day by day 
giving a show at every little village we came 
to, but nothing of any great moment oc- 
curred to vary the monotony. The roads 
were getting dusty and the traveling was 
far from pleasant. Rawlins and the Union 
Pacific R. R. were passed and that was 
really the only glimpse of civilization that 
we had on our entire t;rip. These little 
frontier towns, only reached by stage, used 
to boast of a semi-civilized condition, but 
it seems to take the railroad to bring real 
civilization into a place. From Rawlins to 
Lander on the old freight trail we met one 
of the old fashioned freight outfits consist- 
ing of three immense wagons, as shown by 
the photo, and drawn by some twenty horses 
or mules, all driven by one man who rode 
on the nigh wheel horse and handled the en- 
tire outfit with a jerk line running to the 
leaders. These freight outfits have now 
become a thing of the past as the railroad 
has invaded all that territory. After pass- 
ing Rawlins, we traveled through quite a 
barren country for some distance and were 
delighted when we got into the valley of 
the Popoaggie, pronounced Popogee. That 
day's drive brought us into the pretty little 



106 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

town of Lander, at the foot of the Wind 
River Mountains. This was the banner 
town for our show, as we took in almost 
$100.00 in one night. As we got into such 
excellent pasture we decided that when we 
reached Fort Washakie on the Shoshone 
Reservation we would remain here and let 
our horses recuperate. One of the wheels 
of our wagon required repairing as we had 
a tire off, and the accompanying illustration 
shows the wagon up on blocks when the 
wheel went to the blacksmith's shop. 
While here we helped the soldiers celebrate 
the Fourth of July and took numberless 
photographs as well as giving shows at the 
fort. I was fortunate here in being able 
to get from one of the sargeants a photo- 
graph of the troop when they were on a 
march, from which I made a slide, and the 
excitement of that troop when they saw 
this slide thrown on the screen and were 
looking into their own faces is better 
imagined than described. They jumped 
from their seats like so many school boys 
and rushed over to the canvas, pointing out 
Jack, Bill, Tom and Dick and wondering 
where the old man picked up that picture. 
They laughed at the idea of Roosevelt lead- 
ing up San Juan hill, saying he was not 
with them,butin his tent sending dispatches- 
We amused ourselves from day to day visit- 
ing at the Fort, bathing at the wonderful 
Hot Springs and attending the Indian sun 



Roosevelt's adversary 107 

dances, to which we had a special invita- 
tion. It is almost impossible to describe 
this dance. There was a large tepee with 
a pole in the center and on the top an im- 
mense bunch of brush tied together, and 
these Indians got up and danced toward the 
pole, advancing and retreating until they 
dropped from exhaustion. They stren- 
uously objected to having their photographs 
taken, but we have a few that were taken by 
a friend. We were loath to leave our 
beautiful camp on the bank of the Little 
Wind River. In fact, in all our travels 
whenever we would strike a mountain 
stream rippling over the rocks clear and 
cold, we always hated to leave it because 
we never knew when we would get another 
drink of good water. The ferry on the Big 
Wind River as out of commission when 
we were ready to start, having just gone out 
before we reached the river. We met the 
mail man who had been wrecked and his 
clothes were conspicuous by their scanti- 
ness. He had shed most of them to save 
his life. We turned back from the ferry and 
decided that we would follow up on the 
south bank of the river as far as 
Thermopolis, where there was another ferry, 
and while this took us considerably out of 
our way it gave us some more towns in 
which to exhibit our pictures and also a 
chance to bathe in the world renowned hot 
springs of the Big Horn Basin. On our 



108 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 

journey along we went through the beautiful 
Birdseye Canyon of the Owl Creek Moun- 
tains. On the top of these mountains we 
came near having a fatal accident. My son 
was driving the heavy freight wagon, my 
wife and I were following in the next four 
horse team. On making a turn around a 
little place that was washed out, one of the 
wheels slipped over the bank. My daughter 
was driving with her brother, and almost 
before one could speak we saw that heavy 
wagon, with its load of packing cases, turn 
over, throwing the boy clear of it and pin- 
ning the girl down to the ground. I was 
driving a colt that usually, if you would at- 
tempt to get out of the wagon, would try 
to see how near he could come to kicking 
the bows off it. Without thinking for a 
single instant about this crazy horse, I 
handed the lines to my wife and jumped, 
rushing to my daughter's assistance. My 
son and I raised the wagon sufficiently to 
drag her out from underneath it and were 
surprised to find that she was not killed or 
had even sustained any serious injuries, 
with the exception of a stiff back, from 
which she recovered in two or three days, 
she was not hurt. This accident compelled 
us to camp right on the spot, and fortunately 
it happened at a spring. The next day we 
started to Thermopolis and had the bad for- 
tune to get lost on the road. We wound 
around through the mountains, several times 



roosevelt's adversary 109 

having to take the team off one wagon to 
double up with the other, and at times it 
tried the endurance and strength of the 
eight horses. It seemed when we came to 
some of the hills it was impossible to sur- 
mount them and it was altogether the hard- 
est and most tedious day of the entire trip 
and we were indeed a very weary and thank- 
ful crowd when we pulled into the Hot 
Springs that night. We found these hills 
like the hills of life that one meets daily, 
always look worse before you come to them. 
The Thermopolis Hot Springs have be- 
come celebrated all over the United States. 
Their power in restoring people who have 
had serious liver trouble seems to have no 
equal. I have known a man to be carried on 
a litter after coming all the way from Phil- 
adelphia and placed in that hot spring and 
in two days be able to walk and go and take 
his own bath after having previously spent a 
fortune in trying to find remedies elsewhere. 
It is too bad that so many people will spend 
large sums of money going to Carlsbad and 
other mineral springs in Europe when we 
have these magnificent springs right at their 
own door, and now that there is a railroad 
to them there is no excuse for people who 
can be benefited by hot springs not using 
their own. In those days it was nearly two 
hundred miles' drive over terrible roads 
with bad weather. We gave one of our 
shows at Thermopolis and had a new fea- 



110 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

ture, a rather unique experience. A lady, 
hearing we were going to give a show, vol- 
unteered to let her little boy sing for us. 
She thought it would be good training for 
him, so we tried him out in the afternoon 
and were amazed to hear the way this little 
seven year old fellow would reach the high 
notes and the tremendous compass of his 
voice. He sang "The Star Spangled Ban- 
ner," "Rally Around the Flag" and other 
patriotic songs which made the most enter- 
taining evening we had put on the trip. I 
doubt if this young marvel ever reached 
greater heights, but he certainly deserved 
the training that would have landed him in 
the front rank of the singers of the country. 
After a day or two of resting and a few 
baths in the Hot Springs, we decided to 
move on. We met a man a little further on 
and asked him where we would get good 
feed for our stock. He gave us the en- 
couraging reply that from Big Horn River 
to Cody we wouldn't find enough grass to 
feed a jack rabbit, but somehow or other 
when the horses were turned out we would 
always find them picking a pretty good liv- 
ing. As we were traveling along towards 
Otto, where we proposed to give a show, 
we were met by some cowboys who had 
heard that there was a show coming that 
way, and my son and one of the girls, who 
were riding ahead of the caravan, were asked 
if this was the show coming along and they 



roosevelt's adversary 111 

immediately replied that it was, then the 
cowboys wanted to know where the animals 
were and this mischievous son of mine re- 
plied that the animals were in the back 
wagon. As a matter of fact, the only 
animals in that back wagon were his twin 
sisters. When the cowboys reached this 
wagon they wanted to see the animals and 
the girls assured them that there were no 
animals there. "But,'* said they, "the young- 
man told us that the animals were all in the 
back wagon." "Yes," said one of the 
twins, "we'll teach him where the animals 
are when we get up to him." As a matter 
of fact, in that back wagon we kept an organ 
and all our musical instruments that helped 
to make the show, the only "animals" being 
the girls. Nothing remarkable happened 
until we reached Burlington, a Mormon 
settlement, on the Grey Bull River. Here 
we met some Mormon elders from Salt Lake 
City and one of the apostles by the name of 
Woodruff. They invited us to come to the 
services in the Mormon church and as we 
had never been to anything of the kind, we 
decided to go. We also made arrangements 
to give a show in this church, but were 
told that the people were too poor to pay 
good hard cash for admission. We found 
afterwards that this was far from being the 
fact, as they were a well to do settlement, 
but rather than turn anybody back in an out 
of the way place like this and in order that 



112 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

they might all bring the children to the 
show, we told them that we could use 
chickens or eggs or anything of that kind 
that they could bring along, and several 
brought a dozen eggs for their admission 
fee, but they had mistaken our meaning. 
We told them that we could use chickens, 
and when we cooked the eggs in the morn- 
ing we found that the chickens were inside 
the shells. In order to get to see the show 
they had evidently robbed some old setting 
hen's nest, but we got enough good eggs to 
answer our purpose, and everybody went 
away pleased. We camped several days 
with these Mormon elders as we traveled 
north. They liked to watch our girls pitch 
the tents. When we would get into camp at 
night we would throw the tent out of the 
wagon and my two sons and myself would 
commence to unhitch the horses, hobble 
them and take them to water, and by the 
time that we had the horses attended to the 
girls would have the tent pitched and the 
stove going, getting supper. These Mor- 
mons thought that one of those girls would 
make a pretty good wife and one of them 
did not hesitate to say so, but the girls did 
not have any fancy for sharing matrimonial 
bliss with a half dozen other women, or at 
least taking any chances on doing it. So 
expert were the girls at pitching a tent that 
they challenged the troopers at Fort 
Washaki, but the offer was declined. We 



roosevelt's adversary 113 

had a 12x20 tent and it just took them four 
minutes to pitch that tent and have it ready 
to set up the stove. The boys always at- 
tended to the horses, not only those they 
were driving themselves but the ones that 
the girls were riding and driving. The next 
place of any size that we struck was Cody, 
the home of the celebrated Buffalo Bill, but 
owing to the bridge being washed away, we 
were obliged to take a circuitous route and 
did not give a show there. We were pretty 
nearly on the last lap of our journey now. 
Our destination was Red Lodge, although 
we had started originally for Missoula, but 
the fall was wearing on and we thought it 
inadvisable to continue a trip that would 
land us in the winter, so we pulled into Red 
Lodge with the intention of giving a show 
there but found we were too late, as the only 
place where it was possible to give one was 
occupied by another company. As we did 
not wish to compete we decided to pull on 
down the river, where we were told we 
would be able to get a homestead. We 
camped at a small place called Joliet and 
once again that destiny that shapes our end 
decided our fate here. We gave a show at 
this little school house and while giving the 
show my wife stayed back in camp with 
some of the younger members who did not 
take part. A couple of men came to the 
camp and informed her that one of their 
number was missing and they would like to 



114 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

get a candle from her in order to go and 
look for him. She naturally supposed that 
they were going to use it in a candle lantern 
of some kind, never dreaming of anything 
different until the following morning when 
the sheriff pulled into our camp and told 
us that a safe had been blown up that night 
at the principal store of the village. The 
accompanying photograph shows the dilapi- 
tated condition of the safe after the robbers 
had done their work. We were greatly dis- 
mayed to find that the candle that my wife 
had lent had been the one used in the opera- 
tion of blowing up the safe. It was a candle 
we had bought in Colorado when laying in 
our supplies and it was branded on the side. 
There were no candles of that brand around 
Montana and this fact placed us in a very 
bad predicament. We were informed that 
while we were not suspected of having 
blown up the safe, we would be held as wit- 
nesses. Fortunately among my other ac- 
complishments I had acquired during the 
vissitudes of frontier life I had not yet 
learned that art or I might possibly have 
tried it to see how near I could do it without 
getting caught. However, although they 
got the men who borrowed the candle, it 
was almost as bad, because we were perfect 
strangers in the country and if we were 
to be held as witnesses it was a certainty 
that we could not give bonds and we had 
no desire to be held in the county jail several 



roosevelt's adversary 115 

months until the trial would come off. But 
by some astuteness of their lawyer or some 
miscarriage of justice, the justice of the 
peace before whom the preliminary trial 
was held turned the prisoners loose, and we 
also were allowed to go on our way re- 
joicing. 

Our next stop was at a little place called 
Gebo, on the Clarks' Fork River. At this 
town we showed to the poorest house of 
any we had and to a very unappreciative 
audience, who thought themselves vastly 
too superior to look at anything like a 
stereopticon show. We never couljd see or 
understand why they came. The next day 
we pulled up along the river to a little town 
called Bridger, after the famous old scout 
and frontiersman, Jim Bridger. We had no 
intention of showing at this town, although 
there was a little coal mine there, and when 
we saw it didn't impress us very favorably, 
for all the houses were in one street, com- 
monly called Stringtown, and there was 
barely room for two wagons to pass between 
them, but we thought it was a pretty good 
place to show so we went on a little way be- 
yond the town and camped, going back there 
at night and having a very good turn out. 
The next morning we pulled on up the river 
and were asked to give a show at settler's 
house that night a few miles beyond Bridger. 
We told them if they would guarantee us 
a $5.00 house we would do so, and as that 



116 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

was forthcoming we remained there that 
night. Up to this time we had seen several 
places that were offered us for sale or trade 
but they all seemed too difficult to irrigate 
and we moved on to the mouth of a little 
stream called Bear Creek, and here we 
camped because the feed was good and had 
plenty of water and wood. We also found 
some good neighbors, who were willing to 
supply our needs with vegetables and but- 
ter and eggs. The next day my son and I 
saddled up our horses and rode up to a 
ranch that we heard was for sale. Once 
again we were doomed to disappointment, 
but on our way we saw some land that was 
not taken up and which we heard was short- 
ly to have a railroad through it. We decided 
that if we could take up this land we might 
possibly find coal, which seemed to be very 
abundant in that section, or else be able to 
sell the land to the railroad company, so we 
went back down with the news that we had 
discovered a place that we thought would 
do us for a resting place at last. We could 
just about appreciate the feeling that the 
dove had when it returned to the ark before 
the flood subsided. The idea of getting a 
place where we could at last settle down was 
certainly refreshing. When we came to 
count up our worldly goods we found that 
we were once more practically broke. We 
had a bunch of horses and three wagons, but 
no money, not even enough to pay the $16.00 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 117 

filing fee that was required to file a home- 
stead. However, we soon made friends and 
had no difficulty in getting all the money 
we needed until such a time as we could get 
settled. Having made our filing on the 
homestead it was an easy matter to get 
credit for anything we needed, because it is 
a well known fact that men of experience 
taking up a homestead rarely make a failure 
of it, and of course in order to get a start 
they are willing to pay pretty good interest. 
Such credit looks very attractive to business 
men on the frontier. We were constantly 
laughed at at first for taking up this land, 
and the people thought that we had no ex- 
perience, but the following season we turned 
a spring on a place for a garden and began 
selling vegetables in the Red Lodge market. 
As we came through that town I had tried 
to buy vegetables and found that nearly 
everybody was using canned goods simply 
because they couldn't get the genuine article. 
I told them that I hoped to be able to supply 
them before very long, and that summer we 
sold over $400.00 worth of vegetables from 
that patch of ground. There was no ques- 
tion about the place. The idea of getting 
the vegetables fresh seemed to appeal to the 
people, who had so long been living out of 
cans. We moved on this place the last week 
in August and on the 1st day of September 
the first logs were hauled down from the 
mountain to build us a home. We were still 



118 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

living in the tents and wagons that we had 
traveled in and it was like a beehive around 
the place until the time that the house was 
finished. The boys hauled logs from the 
mountain, and I, with the help of my girls, 
worked from early morning till late at night 
building the house, and on the 1st day of 
October, after being in a tent from the 21st 
of May, we once more sat down to a table 
under our own roof. There was great re- 
joicing over it. That winter, after we had 
got a stable up, the boys went off to the rail- 
road with the teams and left me to look after 
the cow that we had traded for and the 
chickens that we already bought. When 
traveling through the country we usually 
carried our chickens with us. A large coop 
was fastened at the back of the wagon and 
somebody rode behind and every now and 
then there would be an exclamation, 
"There's an egg in the box, stop the wagon !" 
The egg would be gathered and then proceed 
on our journey. When we arrived at camp 
at night the door of the coop was opened 
and all the hens flew out, picking up grass- 
hoppers, insects and enjoying themselves 
thoroughly until the sun went down, then 
they would fly up into the box again as 
naturally as if they were going to roost on 
a regular perch in a henhouse. They 
seemed to realize that that was their home. 
In this manner we had fresh eggs on the 
journey, it being one of the peculiarities of 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 119 

a hen, that as long as you keep moving it 
will keep laying. 

Any person starting out on a ranch must 
be prepared to face all kinds of hardships 
and go without many of the necessities of 
life, or what are considered necessities in 
more civilized communities. It sounds all 
very well to take 160 acres of land from 
Uncle Sam and make a home on it. There 
are fences to build, sage brush to grub out 
if you are in a sage brush country, ditches 
to make for irrigation, water rights to ac- 
quire, and until one has actually gone 
through it it is impossible to appreciate the 
cost of a homestead. On this place we made 
a ditch over eight miles long across gulches 
thirty and forty deep and some of the 
flumes two hundred feet long. All this 
timber had to be hauled from the moun- 
tains, a distance of nine miles, and it was 
slow and tedious work. Yet, the second 
year we succeeded in getting our water on 
to a garden spot consisting of about four 
acres. Up to this time we had practically a 
monopoly of supplying the different mining 
camps with vegetables, but no sooner had 
we demonstrated that it was a money mak- 
ing proposition than people began hauling 
in vegetables from all parts of the country, 
some loads of melons coming as much as 
sixty miles. However, the second year of 
our residence there we made over $1,200 
and everybody remarked what a united 



120 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

family we were. When we went in there 
first it was seriously debated whether we 
should go back on a ranch or not, some of 
the family wishing to live in a town. As 
they were all old enough to care for them- 
selves, I told them to choose their own life, 
that their mother and I were going on a 
ranch. As we had lived together, a happy, 
united family for twenty-three years, when 
it came down to a realization of what it 
meant to sever the chords that bound us, 
we all decided to pull together, and as long 
as we did pull together at one end of the 
rope everything seemed to prosper. We 
worked together grubbing sage brush, piling 
it and burning it. We cleared a large tract 
of land, planted it with alfalfa and saw our 
large stacks of hay grow year by year, our 
stock of cattle increased and our baskets of 
butter and eggs all went to swell the bank 
account. How long this condition of affairs 
would have lasted is hard to say, but one 
day a young man who was driving sheep 
through the country was lost near our home 
and sought shelter under our roof. Cupid's 
dart did its work here, and one of our girls 
fell a victim. This was the first serious 
mistake in the family. About this time a 
friend wrote to me from the Jackson Hole 
country imploring me to do something to 
save the elk from extinction, and this old 
pioneer, D. W. Spalding, is the man to whom 
the credit for the original crusade against 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 121 

the use of elk teeth as emblems is due, not 
to Roosevelt, who claims it. He wrote me 
that not only in Jackson Hole, but also in 
the boundaries of the park the elk were being 
slaughtered by the hundreds for their teeth, 
their carcasses being left untouched, not 
even their tongues taken out of them. I 
made inquiries from other sources and found 
that the authorities in the Yellowstone 
National Park were doing nothing to pre- 
vent the slaughter at the Southern end of it. 
In fact, it was hinted that they were bene- 
fited by this law breaking. Things like that 
are hard to prove, but myself and some 
friends organized a Sportsmen's Game Pro- 
tection Association and I received consider- 
able information and substantial assistance 
from sportsmen all over the country. I 
heard that the laws were being broken in 
other ways in the park and I decided in 
September, 1902, to make a trip through the 
park and learn all that I could about this 
law breaking. I accordingly got some films 
and took my camera and started through the 
park. Everywhere as we traveled through 
the park, on the trees I saw a notice placed, 
"No barrooms or saloons shall be allowed 
within the limits of this park," and yet, at 
every hotel in the park I saw barrooms and 
liquor served in unlimited quantities. I 
also saw at the Mammoth Hot Springs a 
separate bar kept for the teamsters, the men 
in whose hands hundreds of precious lives 



122 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

were intrusted, driving two, four or six 
horses along dangerous precipices in that 
park. I also learned that there was gamb- 
ling allowed at this place and saw some 
going on, and that every pay day the soldiers 
quartered at the Fort spent most of their 
money here. I remained at each hotel long 
enough to get photographs of people drink- 
ing at the bar and to get all the information 
I could. I spent money freely at these bars 
and found no difficulty in loosening tongues 
able to give me all the particulars I needed 
and the conclusion I came to was that the 
Commandant was hand and glove with the 
law breakers, a fact that I afterwards got 
affidavits to prove and which I showed 
Roosevelt. Two troops of cavalry were 
kept there to enforce these rules and yet 
these barrooms and this gambling hall were 
allowed to run wide open. All kinds of in- 
sults and indignities were heaped upon 
people traveling in the park. Private teams 
camping through the park were run off, 
either in the hope of getting a reward for 
recovering them or in order to keep people 
from going through the park with their own 
outfit, thus compelling them to use the 
hotels or else stay outside. I got several 
affidavits from parties sent to me voluntarily 
as soon as they found I was investigating 
conditions in the park, and these, together 
with the photographs of the illegal bars, I 
took with me to Washington, as I found it 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 123 

necessary in order to get any notice taken 
of these conditions to go in person and see 
the President. I had written several letters 
to the President regarding this matter and 
in every case the letter was turned over to 
the Interior Department. As these bars 
could not possibly be run in this park with- 
out the connivance of the Interior 
Department, together with the superintend- 
ent of the park, there was absolutely no use 
turning it over to them to investigate. 
When I got to Washington I found the 
President suffering from an injured leg, and 
on each visit to the White House I was told 
it would be impossible to see him yet, as 
he was doing as little business as possible. 
I waited several weeks and finally induced 
Mr. Cortelyou, who was the private secre- 
tary to the President, to take my card up 
to the President, and he immediately 
returned, telling me to go upstairs, as the 
President was then in the temporary White 
House, while the White House was being 
repaired. The President met me at the top 
of the stairs and gave me a most cordial 
handshake, for while he had never previ- 
ously seen me, he had often read my 
articles in the sporting journals and hunted 
and camped with men with whom I had 
hunted. As soon as we were seated he 
asked me my business. I told him that 
there had been great slaughter of elk in the 
Yellowstone Park and the Jackson Hole 



124 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

County, that elk teeth were passing current 
for $4.00 a piece in the section, and that the 
superintendent of the park was, in my 
opinion, a first class grafter. The President 
immediately changed, his cordiality had 
vanished and he flew into a passion, shout- 
ing at me, "You dare to call my friend, John 
Pitcher, a grafter?" I said I certainly 
would, I could not call him anything else, 
and "Further," I said, "when you were po- 
lice commissioner in New York and an Irish 
policeman walked before an illegal dive, 
allowing it to run, you called him a grafter, 
and for my part I fail to see any difference 
between Major John Pitcher with an army 
at his back to prevent these dives from run- 
ning, and yet allowing them to run, and your 
Irish policeman in New York." The Presi- 
dent immediately informed me without 
hearing any more evidence that because I 
had called his friend, John Pitcher, a grafter 
I had ruined my cause. He got angry and 
walked over to me. I told him to keep cool, 
that I had not come two thousand miles to 
run any bluff on him, but I had the goods 
with me and I showed him the photographs 
of the illegal bars that were running and 
affidavits. I told him of stages that had 
been upset, of passengers who had been 
crippled and injured for life owing to the 
drunken drivers, one stage with thirteen 
people on it that was upset into the Gardner 
Canyon, and as soon as he discovered that I 



roosevelt's adversary 125 

had the goods and that he was cornered, he 
sat down in his chair and told me to take 
my affidavits and photographs home and 
write him all particulars. I told him that I 
would not write again, that I had wasted 
enough time writing letters to have his 
secretary turn them over to the assistant 
secretary of the Interior, who himself had 
been seen drinking at the very bars of the 
park. I said, "If I knew that you would 
get the letter and act upon it, I would take 
the trouble to write again." He immed- 
iately grabbed a piece of paper, tore off a 
corner and wrote on it, "Show this letter 
to me, T. Roosevelt." He said, "Pin that 
to your letter and I will get it." I did so, I 
wrote him all the particulars of the different 
outrages that had been perpetrated in the 
park that I had learned on my trip going 
around there, and I never yet have had the 
courtesy of a reply. The following spring 
in April, the President made a trip to the 
park at the expense of the Northern Pacific 
Railroad, who were running the hotels at 
that time, and sat on the Mammoth Hot 
Springs' Hotel piazza while liquor was being 
sold over the bar of that hotel, showing how 
little they had to fear from the "great" 
Executive of this nation. He remained in 
the park a few days, came out and white- 
washed the whole bunch. All this time I 
was receiving letters from prominent men 
all over the country tendering me their sup- 



126 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

port, telling of the outrages that had been 
perpetrated upon them in the National Park 
and urging me to continue the good work. 
In spite of the fact that I had taken Spald- 
ing's letter down to the President and that I 
had written a letter myself to Outdoor Life 
regarding the slaughter of the elk and the 
use of their tusks as emblems, this same 
President Roosevelt has lately taken the 
trouble to exploit himself as the man who 
instituted the crusade to save the elk. The 
columns of Outdoor Life have a letter from 
me before Roosevelt ever heard of it. I de- 
termined that the matter was not going to 
end there and once again turned my face to 
Washington in the hope that I would be 
able to influence congressmen. I went to 
the New York Sun and urged them to take 
the matter up and they came out with double 
leaded head lines, "Fullerton is the first man 
who has dared openly to call President 
Roosevelt a coward." I said that he was 
a coward because he did not dare to do his 
duty and clean up that park because it 
would injure the Northern Pacific Railroad 
and so help to imperil his chances of re- 
election, and had the people of the United 
States ever known the real truth and the 
contemptible position in which he was plac- 
ed they never would have re-elected him to 
a second term. He never dared then to apply 
his pet short and ugly epithet to me and he 
does not dare now, for I have yet letters and 



roosevelt's adversary 127 

affidavits and photos that they failed to 
steal among the others that were taken 
while I was confined, that will prove my 
case in any court in the land, and the public 
who now take his calling a man a liar as a 
huge joke, when they see the photos and 
affidavits he refused to act on will also brand 
him a moral coward. I took the affidavits 
and photographs and showed them to the 
Hon. J. K. Jones, a Senator of Arkansas. 
He replied to me after reading them, "Mr. 
Fullerton, I never saw such charges made 
against a President of the United States 
backed by such irrefutable proof." He 
asked me to bring all the evidence that I 
had in the matter to the Democratic con- 
vention that was to be held in St. Louis. 
He said he was satisfied that a pamphlet 
setting forth all these photographs and 
affidavits and the few particulars of the con- 
ditions as it was, after being placed in the 
hands of the voters would defeat any man 
no matter what office he ran for. I went to 
all the papers that I could get in the large 
cities of the United States that published 
columns denouncing the President's actions 
and still this great bluffer hesitated to turn 
out the man who had been allowing all these 
irregularities. I never rested from the at- 
tack. I attended conventions in the large 
cities and urged the men there to take ac- 
tion. I went to San Francisco and saw the 
old soldiers. Articles were published from 



128 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

New York to San Francisco, but never an 
answer from Teddy Roosevelt. One night 
in the fall of 1904, when I was staying at my 
ranch in Montana, a rider came to the door 
and called me out, saying that he wanted 
to speak to me privately. He told me that 
a certain Senator had come from Washing- 
ton and been closeted with one of the 
biggest scoundrels in the State of Montana, 
and he told me that the orders had gone out 
that I must be got rid of and he advised 
me strongly to "beat it" out of the country 
or I would get a drop of the same medicine 
that had been dealt out to the rustlers in 
Johnson County, Wyoming, in 1902. As I 
was in Wyoming at that time he knew that 
I would not mistake his meaning. I told 
him to go back and tell the devils that were 
after me that I could shoot as quick and 
straight as any man in the country and if 
they proposed, to kill me to be sure and do 
it the first shot or they would never live to 
fire a second. From that day on I always 
went armed when I had occasion to ride out. 
Finding that they could not get me that way, 
a man came up from New York. Whether 
he was sent directly from that city by Presi- 
dent Roosevelt, which my friends have 
always insisted upon, because they always 
believed that the first orders came from the 
head office, or not, I am not prepared to 
state. I will simply leave the public to draw 
their own conclusions. At any rate a pol- 



Roosevelt's adversary 129 

ished, suave scoundrel was introduced by 
one of the local politicians into my home. I 
little dreamed at this time the depth of 
villainy to which men will sink in order to 
accomplish the ruin of a man who is in their 
way, nor the dastardly outrages that can be 
perpetrated in the name of the law in what 
we are supposed to consider a civilized 
nation. This man ingratiated himself into 
our family and finally drew upon my stock 
of hospitality and generosity by represent- 
ing himself to be hard up and out of work. 
My two poor boys were doing three men's 
work and I was rather glad of the oppor- 
tunity to get someone to help them, but I 
little realized that in warming this viper at 
my hearth I was laying the foundation for 
the ruin of my home. Scarcely had he got 
settled in the house than he began to poison 
the minds of my unsophisticated, ignorant, 
frontier children, who, although many of 
them had attained their majority, knew less 
of the ways of the world than ten year old 
children in the city. We led an isolated 
life on the frontier and while my wife and I 
taught them such elementary knowledge as 
they had, yet they knew nothing of the 
ways of the world. I had no use whatever 
for my son-in-law and still less for his 
brother, although I had hospitably enter- 
tained them at my house, and while feeding 
them at my table, they, together with this 
villian from New York were plotting my 



130 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

ruin and poisoning the minds of my chil- 
dren against me. Was there ever a viler 
human being than the man who will 
plot to ruin another whose hospitality he 
enjoys? Yet, such were these Kimballs. 
Instead of the harmony that had always 
existed for almost thirty years and all of 
us pulling together, as soon as they entered 
my home everything was changed. The 
ranch began to go down, things were 
neglected and I had absolutely no more con- 
trol over them. We began having quarrels 
in the family and at last they succeeded in 
getting my youngest son hypnotized by 
this man from New York to help them 
trump up a charge of insanity against his 
father. I was unceremoniously arrested, 
and that night in the sheriff's office, the 
sheriff, the deputy sheriff and the jailer all 
made the statement that if I was insane it 
was time to enlarge the jails, because they 
would require to take everybody else in the 
town. They knew positively that there 
was not a saner man in that community and 
I have since been told that the doctors who 
were on the commission to examine me re- 
ceived one thousand dollars for their 
services. I have endeavored to get posi- 
tive proof of this, but there are things in 
this world that it is impossible to prove, 
though I have no doubt that no man would 
be guilty of committing a perfectly sane 
man to an insane asylum unless he was well 



v roosevelt's adversary 131 

paid for doing it, and what shall we say 
of the judge who signed the commitment 
papers and afterwards turned around to my 
personal friend and said, "This is all wrong, 
that man is no more insane than I am." 
However, they had accomplished their end. 
They could proclaim in double leaded type, 
"Roosevelt's traducer is insane." They 
had legally destroyed the man that was in 
their way and this legal death is permitted 
and accomplished time and again in this 
land that is proclaimed the land of the free. 
I went to the asylum and was thrown into 
a den of syphilitic idiots, the object being 
to deprive me of my reason, and had it not 
been for the noble house doctor, who stood 
by me and encouraged me, and my in- 
domitable will power, I must undoubtedly 
have succumbed, either my life or my mind 
would have gone out. The guards pro- 
tested against this awful injustice and they 
urged me to leave, offered me all the 
assistance that I required to get away. The 
doctor urged the warden daily to let me 
out but he kept me there fourteen days, 
during which time I never slept, except a 
few hours under the influence of chloral 
that I begged the house doctor to give me. 
I entered that hell-hole, that could only 
have been equaled in the days of the In- 
quisition, weighing 186 lbs. ; I left it 
fourteen days later weighing 158 lbs., with 
my hair whitened, my cheeks hollow, my 



132 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

nerves and health irretrievably wrecked. 
The tortures of that dastardly outrage can 
never be even imagined except by those who 
have suffered the like. At this writing, six 
years afterwards, I am still a nervous wreck 
from the shock, and I never hear the name 
of Roosevelt but with abhorrence, for to 
him and his vindicative nature I feel satis- 
fied that I owe it all. When I came out of 
there the warden told me that I could go 
where I pleased but I was to report three 
times a day at meal times, which I was to 
eat with the guards. He saw the condition 
to which he had reduced me and so thought 
he would feed me up, as he told me. I 
could go where I pleased and I went out 
among the ranchmen and their very blood 
boiled at the idea of such an injustice having 
been perpetrated. Some of them wrote to 
my wife, but she foolishly listened to the 
warden, who told her not to come to see 
me as he knew "hell would pop" if she did. 
As I was walking in one night about nine 
o'clock I saw the warden passing up and 
down in front of his house. He called to 
me and took me by the arm and we walked 
up and down before his house for two hours. 
He told me that he had never had anything 
to happen in his long experience as a war- 
den that had caused him so much worry as 
my case, that he knew that I was as sane 
as he was but that I was a political prisoner. 
He assured me that he would like to do any- 



roosevelt's adversary 133 

thing for me that he could, but that if he 
discharged me he would immediately forfeit 
his position, and he had the nerve to turn 
to me and say, ''What would you do if you 
were in my place?" I hesitated a long 
while before making a reply and finally I 
said, "Doctor, as a man and a brother 
Mason, I want to tell you that I think I 
would make a man of myself, I would be 
no man's tool. There is not money enough 
in this United States to buy me to confine 
a fellow man for the sake of a lot of 
dastardly politicians." After that I was 
feeding with the guards and getting the fat 
of the land, and I was gaining strength. 
They were all as good to me as they could 
possibly be and most of them said that if 
they were in my place they would not re- 
main there another day, they would go 
home, take a rifle and kill every one of those 
who had had a hand in sending me to the 
bell-hole. I told them no, people would 
then certainly have an opportunity to say 
that I was insane, and I proposed to prove 
to the world that every man that had a 
hand in it was a liar of the deepest dye, and 
six years later, as I write this, I am able 
to stand up before the world and prove that 
statement. They were liars and perjurers 
without a particle of manhood, seeking only 
the gain of gold. Some months afterward 
these Kimballs reported that their father 
had received some $5,000 for looking at a 



134 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

piece of property. It is a great deal more 
likely to have been their share of blood 
money for helping to ruin me. The Yel- 
lowstone Park company lost thousands by 
my attacking their methods and could easily 
afford to pay well for my destruction. 
Along towards the end of March after I had 
been taking long walks and stiffening my 
muscles for the effort, I made up my mind 
to leave the place for good and all. I 
gathered up my clothes and hid them in a 
haystack and some of the guards gave me 
money to help me away, and one night I 
decided that I would go as soon as it got 
dark. I got some provisions and struck 
out for the top of the mountains, on my way 
to Canada. I had barely reached the top 
of the mountain, which was in full view of 
the asylum, when a blizzard set in. I had 
never been over the trail before and hadn't 
the slightest idea, now that the stars and 
the moon were obliterated, where I was 
going, but I knew which way the wind had 
started from and I walked in the teeth of 
it. When daylight broke I found myself 
near a milk ranch, a few miles out of Butte. 
I told this milkman that I was traveling for 
my health, which was certainly true, 
and he offered to give me a ride. I enjoyed 
a thorough good breakfast at his place, 
which warmed me up and did me good. If 
I had not been a frontiersman of experience 
and also very sane I never could have faced 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 135 

that blizzard and come out alive, and a man 
needed all his wits in a storm in the moun- 
tains. When we approached the city of 
Butte, I told him that the hills were steep 
and that I would ease his team for him, so 
when he disappeared around the bend of 
the road I slipped up a draw to the left and 
saw him no more. I had no desire to enter 
a city with telephones and telegraphs in it. 
I intended to make my way down to the 
Missouri River and so struck out in a north- 
ward direction. I followed a woodland 
trail and it ran in the direction I wanted to 
go. Occasionally I would stop, boil my 
tomato can, make tea and get a little re- 
freshment. In fact I made a first class 
tramp. That night at nine o'clock, after 
having been twenty-five hours tramping, I 
came to a ranch at the head of a little creek, 
and from the day I met the kind hearted 
ranchman and his wife I have never ceased 
to pray for blessings on their heads. They 
took me in and cared for me as if I had been 
their own brother, and that night I slept 
under their roof without telling them 
whence I had come, but finding that the man 
was a brother Mason, and not only a Mason 
but a good Mason, I confided in him the 
next morning and he then and there volun- 
teered to help me in every way in his power 
and was furious to think that such a das- 
tardly outrage had been perpetrated on a 
man of my character. I remained with them 



136 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

three days and when my feet, which were 
blistered and bleeding when I got to them, 
were sufficiently healed for me to proceed on 
my journey, I started down to the railroad 
track determined to risk a trip on the cars, 
as this good Samaritan had handed me a 
twenty dollar gold piece on leaving his 
house. I had not walked far when a man 
with a team came along and I jumped into 
his wagon and drove to the station. I had 
shaved off all my whiskers, donned an over- 
all outfit and a miner's cap and should any 
of my own children have met me on the 
platform they would not have recognized 
me. When we got to Helena a man came 
into the car that night and looked me over 
very carefully and I thought certainly I was 
in for being re-arrested, but he evidently 
decided that I was not the fellow that he 
wanted, and I got to Great Falls without 
further mishap. As soon as I reached 
Great Falls I hunted up a cheap room 
where I decided no one would know me 
and had a good rest, only waking in time 
to get some breakfast at a counter and to 
catch the train for Lethbridge. I barely 
seated myself when a man I had met at 
Red Lodge came and sat by me without 
the slightest recognition. My disguise was 
so complete that I now felt quite safe. We 
talked all the way and had a good time to- 
gether till the boundary was reached and 
the customs inspection began. Words can 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 137 

never express my feeling when I saw the 
dear old flag once more floating over me 
and knew I was on British soil. There is 
a feeling comes over one then that none but 
those who have experienced it can realize. 
Yes, on British soil and a free man. That 
flag that ever stands for justice, honor and 
integrity of the courts, where judges are 
not for sale, was once more waving over 
me. As I turned and looked south across 
the imaginary line and saw that other flag 
that once had stood for freedom, that nearly 
one hundred years ago had cast off the 
British yoke, that had later freed the slaves, 
that had cut the shackles of Spain from the 
Cubans and Phillipines and now by the 
debauchery of the courts of Montana in 
their diabolical attempt to destroy a man 
who had dared to tell the truth, had had a 
stain put on it that time can never 
obliterate. Here I saw the boys of the old 
force, the Royal Northwest Mounted Po- 
lice, and none but those who have actually 
undergone such experiences as I had can 
ever appreciate what it means to feel that 
you have the protection of those red coated 
sentinels. That evening we reached Leth- 
bridge and I just had $1.25 left. I paid one 
dollar for my supper, bed and breakfast, 
and after disposing of the latter I inquired 
for work, only to learn that there were a 
number of others in the same predicament 
and no work to be had, so they said. I 



138 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

went to the Church of England's rector, 
and once more fate had directed my steps 
to one of those sterling men who are ever 
ready to help a fellow who is down and 
wants to help himself, and I hope the day 
may come when I can be of service to him. 
This good Samaritan took me to a boarding 
house and guaranteed my board for a week. 
The next day he found me work planting 
some trees. A few miles west, at Calgary, 
lived a man who was a struggling parson 
when I first knew him, at the time I married 
his sister in Winnipeg. In those days he 
was a pretty decent sort of fellow. At that 
time, in the early 70's, I was handling a 
large number of cattle and making consid- 
erable money, and was very willing to lend 
aid to my struggling brother-in-law. 
When his babies needed milk I bought him 
a cow to help out and took great pleasure 
in taking him lots of game with which the 
country abounded, and now when I was 
down and out I naturally supposed, as fate 
had drawn me in his diocese, for he was 
now bishop of Calgary, that he would be 
delighted to have the opportunity to repay 
some of the kindness I had shown him. I 
wrote him of my condition, and to my sur- 
prise and disgust, I received a letter 
enclosing ten dollars and stating: "I 
CANNOT AND WILL NOT RECEIVE 
YOU INTO MY HOUSE." I had not 
asked him to enter his inhospitable home 



roosevelt's adversary 139 

because I knew from past experiences 
that he did not know the first principles 
of hospitality, but the mitre on his head 
had made it swell till he was like a 
puffed toad. This was supposed to be a 
follower of the lowly Nazarine, instead he 
was an ingrate of the deepest dye. I real- 
ized why he was never spoken of without 
being laughed at, as I heard it done repeat- 
edly in Lethbridge by those who never 
dreamed of connecting our families. It is 
such men that make a mockery of religion 
and a farce of the church. I didn't need his 
money when at last it came, but as he owed 
me that and more, I took it. I was already 
run over with work planting shade, orna- 
mental and fruit trees. I met with so much 
kindness in this town that I wanted to 
settle here and wrote my wife to come. 
The poor soul had been suffering all these 
weeks, for it was now six weeks since I 
left home, torn from her side after living 
with her for thirty years, represented to her 
as insane and dangerous by my lying son- 
in-law and his treacherous brother, who, 
vilest of all human vipers, the most despic- 
able of all humanity had sat at my table 
and enjoyed my hospitality while plotting 
my ruin because they had been called down 
by me for conduct that no man with any 
sense of decency would have been guilty of, 
and there is no doubt in my mind thev 
were offered a price as well as wanting me 



140 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

out of the way since I had ordered them off 
the ranch. The unprincipled scoundrel at 
the asylum that had cast me into a den of 
idiots added to her torture, while I was 
there, by writing her not to come to see me 
"as it would do me harm." I suppose it 
would have been necessary to kill me when 
she found out what was being done. These 
sons-in-law kept asserting to my dear old 
companion that it was dangerous for her to 
come, so the people of the town of Leth- 
bridge got up a petition signed in triplicate 
by all the prominent people, business men 
and doctors, setting forth that I was not 
insane, etc., and pointing out the gross in- 
justice that had been done me, and a copy 
was sent to Judge Henry, Joe Toole, Gov- 
ernor of Montana, and my wife. In 
addition, three doctors signed a statement 
that I was not only sane but mentally above 
my fellows. Still these scheming devils 
held her, knowing full well that once she 
saw me and realized the extent of the 
diabolical injustice that had been done me, 
their game would be up. They seemed to 
have a hypnotic control over my poor, 
worldy ignorant, children, who believed 
everything the dastards told them. I at 
last, in June, yielded to my wife's im- 
portunities and pleading and started for 
Red Lodge, although I felt I was taking 
my life in my hands when I did so, and I 
felt sure if I was retaken to the asylum I 



roosevelt's adversary 141 

would be killed as I knew others had been. 
Where there was no danger there was no 
fun for me, but this was a danger I did not 
relish. The game was too one-sided. On 
the road from Billings to Red Lodge I met 
a friend who had always stood by me and 
denounced my persecutors. He told me 
the sheriff was waiting for me, having been 
notified by phone, but if I dropped off the 
train and went to his house I could get 
home before they got me. Here my old 
railroad training came into use, and nobody 
knew when I quietly dropped from the rear 
steps. All I wanted was to see my wife, 
for I well knew that if she ever realized 
that she had been a tool and made a fool of 
by a lot of designing brutes, who, regardless 
of her suffering, only wanted my destruc- 
tion, she would rise to the occasion, and she 
surely did. I got a team and soon covered 
the intervening miles to the ranch. Here 
I found two of the devils who had ruined 
my home, the fellow from New York and 
my son-in-law's brother, who had made use 
of my absence to propose to another daugh- 
ter, thus showing his chief reason for 
wanting me out of the way. This fellow 
and the girl and my youngest son, who was 
absolutely controlled and is yet controlled 
by him, withdrew to the stable and there 
hatched out a still more fiendish plot. 
Knowing as they did that all Lethbridge 
had certified to my sanity and that others 



142 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP 

had done the same, where their ignorance 
might have been some excuse previously, 
now there was none, yet they worked on 
that deluded ignorant boy and got him to 
get out of his window at midnight and go 
to the sheriff and ask for my re-arrest. But 
this time they got left. They could not 
fool my wife any longer, and when the 
deputy sheriff came at noon, she dropped a 
bomb in their camp by saying, "Where my 
husband goes, there I go too." We went to 
town to the hotel and the sheriff called the 
warden on the long distance phone and 
asked if he wanted me. He replied, "No, 
we don't want him, there's nothing the mat- 
ter with him." The sheriff turned and 
repeated it to my wife and asked her what 
she wanted. "I want my husband," she 
said, and we went home to part no more 
till the Great Reaper gets His work in. As 
a perfectly sane man when I was confined 
in that asylum, I am capable of giving 
testimony that should appeal to those who 
have friends confined. I learned many 
things from guards who had worked else- 
where and also what I saw, and I want to 
emphasize the fact that our asylums are a 
blot on humanity, a stain on the entire 
nation. Inhumanity, murder, graft, tor- 
tures inconceivable that would put to 
shame the days of the inquisition are prac- 
ticed for no other reason than that the 
unfortunate have lost their minds and 



roosevelt's adversary 143 

cannot object, because in the eyes of the law 
they are dead. 

Conditions were intolerable at the ranch, 
and so, after living together, a happy, united 
family for thirty years, the heart strings 
were rent asunder, the home sacrificed, and 
with my dear old companion I set out again 
to begin life anew. The future looked dark, 
very dark. My nerves were shattered by 
confinement, starvation and sleepless nights 
in the asylum. The stigma of the asylum 
has compelled me to leave the marts of 
business and get away from society of my 
fellows, for up to the present none of the 
cowards has had honor enough to publish 
to the world the truth that they lied to get 
rid of me, and as a consequence strangers 
who saw the glaring head lines at the time 
the debauchery was worked naturally be- 
lieved me really insane. Our ranch that 
I had negotiated a sale of for $12,000, as 
soon as final proof was made, went for a 
few hundreds, and the personal property 
the children got. 

We decided in the midst of all this tur- 
moil to take a trip to the Portland Fair, so 
my wife and I started out "to do the Fair." 
We reached Portland on the 21st of June 
and spent a week seeing all the sights, but 
there was no rest in such a crowded place, 
so we decided to come farther, and went on 
to Seattle. We reached this City of Hills 
in a rain storm and I had not been there 



144 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

more than half an hour when I wished my- 
self back in Portland. We made inquiries 
where we could get rooms and it seemed as 
if every room in town was full. The places 
we were sent to we would have hated to 
have tied our dog up in, and places that 
looked pretty decent we could not get into, 
they were all full. However, we happened 
into a place where we saw rooms for rent 
and got one little back room and the use 
of a stove if we wanted to cook. Some- 
times we took our meals out and sometimes 
we cooked a dainty little meal and enjoyed 
the quiet of our room. We were expecting 
some money and while waiting for it we 
ran completely out. One night coming out 
of church we had just ten cents left and 
did not know where the next was coming 
from or what we were going to do to pay 
for our food the next day. Here we were 
absolute strangers in the city. As we were 
walking along my wife said she was hun- 
gry for a piece of cake. She just wanted 
cake and wanted it badly, so we decided to 
go down and spend our last dime for a cake 
and trust to luck for the morrow. That 
luck seems never to desert us, for on the 
morrow I went out to look for something 
to do and was directed to a lady who had a 
small ranch that was going to ruin from 
the want of attention. Her husband had 
been laid up in the hospital and died, and 
she jumped at the opportunity of getting 



roosevelt's adversary 145 

me to go and take care of it for her. There 
was really very little to do on the place, 
only a small garden to look after, and I had 
abundance of time left in which to go fish- 
ing and otherwise amuse myself. The 
climate on the coast seemed the most de- 
lightful that we had ever seen. There were 
no storms or no strong winds. Every- 
thing seemed peaceful except the everlast- 
ing bustle on the streets, but as we only 
got into this bustle when we came down 
town, my wife's nerves were rapidly 
recovering from the shock they had received 
and both of us were feeling better. We fell 
in love with the country and decided that 
Seattle was good enough for us to stay 
with. That year we started a small 
grocery store, but the free life of the range 
had got into my blood and I couldn't stand 
the confinement, especially with my nerv- 
ous condition, so the following spring I 
hunted up a small ranch on one of the is- 
lands and there we went into the chicken 
business. The following spring, water 
front property being at a premium, a rich 
Alaskan came down and bought us out. 
We made the mistake then of trying to be- 
come city folks, and it was forcibly brought 
home to me that a shoemaker should stick 
to his last, and in addition the stigma of 
the asylum made it impossible to make a 
success in business. A man who has been 
inured to a frontier life is totally unfit to 



146 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

cope with city men without such a handi- 
cap. During the time that we lived in the 
city, I undertook to try my hand at selling 
medicine on the fair grounds at the Alaska 
Yukon Exposition. I thought that it was 
going to be an easy job, that all I had to do 
was to stand up and tell people about it 
and they would buy it because it did the 
work, and that really was about all there 
was to do with it, but telling people is not 
as easy as it looks, in fact, it was the hard- 
est work that I ever undertook in my life 
and I realized how badly my nerves had 
been shattered by my awful experience. 
Today a man could hardly guarantee me a 
sum sufficient to get me to undertake it 
again. But it is a far cry from the quarter 
deck of a broncho to peddling medicine and 
speeling at an exposition. 

After having put in six years of city life, 
I am again preparing to return to the soil 
and I never intend to leave it. Would that 
I had the pen of a Harriet Beecher Stowe 
to be able to depict the tortures of a modern 
asylum so that it would rouse this nation 
as did Uncle Tom's Cabin. Valentine Vox 
awoke England to the horrors of her 
asylums and if what I have suffered could 
arouse the people of this nation to a 
realization of their peril, I would consider 
that I had not suffered in vain. You, Mr. 
Man, and you, mother, wife or sister, 
apathetic in your fancied security, just as 



roosevelt's adversary 147 

I was. Is it none of your business to look 
into these matters? How do you know 
your turn may not come next? You could 
not love your family any better than I loved 
mine. You could not trust your family 
more implicitly than I trusted mine, though 
I never trust anything but a dog now. 

How do you know but the stranger you 
have just fed and warmed at your hearth 
has not the poison of the deadly asp under 
his tongue. There are other reptiles abroad 
who, for one reason or another, may want 
you out of the way. A few dollars and a 
little perjury and you are dead in the eyes 
of the law. Penniless and a prisoner, pos- 
sibly thrown into a dungeon with a lot of 
helpless idiots, who could not care for their 
own person and were treated like a pen of 
hogs, simply living carcasses held down 
there awaiting death, and in this dungeon 
I saw sane men thrown because they re- 
fused to scrub floors. I have the names 
and dates that this took place. These men 
had been drinking, one had cut his throat, 
but all were perfectly sane again. We con- 
stantly read of children trying to get 
parents put out of the way to get property, 
and there seems to be no redress. A law 
should be passed in every state making it 
a felony to charge sane people with insan- 
ity and punish such dastardly crimes with 
not less than ten years' solitary confinement 
in a penitentiary. Better a thousand times 



148 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

murder anyone than send them to the liv- 
ing hells provided by our states. 

Every asylum should be visited at least 
once a month by a committee of clergy or 
laymen, and every patient (prisoner would 
be a better name for "hospital" for the in- 
sane is a farce) given an opportunity to 
make complaints free from the eyes of the 
warden or guards. There should be quar- 
ters for convalescents and those of different 
degrees of insanity, and in no case should 
anyone ever be taken to an asylum till a 
jury had passed on his case. Cheap skates 
of doctors, such as pretended to examine 
me, can be bought at a few dollars a dozen 
to send anyone to these hell holes, and it is 
only a matter of money how long they stay 
or a question of how long their mind can 
stand such an awful strain and not give 
way. Every patient should have free ac- 
cess to the mails. The silly excuse that 
patients' letters must be read by the warden 
to see that no obscene matter is mailed is 
only an excuse to prevent the victims from 
exposing the brutality they have suffered. 
Of course there are some unfortunates who 
are helplessly and hopelessly insane, but 
that is no reason they should have brutal 
treatment. 

The asylum in Montana is more like a 
hotel, the owners getting so much a head 
per day. These men own the buildings 
and it does not pay to have empty beds in 



roosevelt's adversary 149 

an hotel, hence, many who could be out 
working are kept long after they are well. 
First class mechanics, perfectly sane, are 
kept because of their valuable free labor. 
It is much cheaper than having to hire men 
at $3 and $4 per day, but what about the 
poor devil who is at the mercy of such a 
diabolical system? I heard a guard say 
one day, "That fellow told me one day he 
wouldn't eat, well, I guess I made him, I 
took an iron bar and pried his jaws open 
and stuffed him." He died. Who killed 
him? "Quien Sabe?" 

They will tell the people that I was in- 
sane and did not know. They will lie. I 
was called insane in the rotten State of 
Montana but I crossed an imaginary line 
and could not coax the king's counsel to 
have me tried before a court of record, 
where I knew there was justice. They said 
to bring your asylum up here if all the rest 
are like you, we want men of your calibre. 

While in the asylum I heard guards dis- 
cussing cases where men had been knocked 
down, kicked and abused "to put terror into 
them/' I heard of one being drowned in 
the tank while bathing and the guard did 
nothing. Throw them in a pine box and 
haul them out with an ox wagon. Who 
cares? 



150 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

APPENDIX. 

The following affidavit and letters, also the 
photo of illegal bars in Yellowstone Park are the 
remnants of my papers that I found in my home 
that had been missed by the thief who stole the 
rest. These are a sample of the affidavits and 
papers that were submitted to President Roose- 
velt and which he had in his possession, yet he 
took a special train from the Northern Pacific 
Railroad to go up into the Park to investigate 
( ?) my charges, knowing that the railroad owned 
the hotels where these illegal acts were, and I 
am told are still permitted with the full knowl- 
edge of the President and the interior depart- 
ment. 

It is not a question of whether I or any one 
else drinks liquor or is a total abstainer. Con- 
gress made laws to govern that Park and said 
"No barroom or saloon shall be allowed within 
the limits of this Park" and notices are posted 
on trees all around the Park and in the hotels 
giving the rules of the Park. There are two 
troops of cavalry kept there to enforce these 
rules and an officer of the army as Superintend- 
ent in charge. 

I went to Roosevelt with photos of those bars 
and affivadits of debauchery, and because of the 
power of the railroad to prevent his re-election 
he turned coward, sacrificed his manhood, his 
oath of office, everything to his ambition and 
took a special favor of a train and white- 
washed the whole outfit. Was he an honest man? 



roosevelt's adversary 151 

Nor did he dismiss his personal friend, Major 
John Pitcher, from office until I had hounded 
him through the papers for two years. W. J. 
Burns, one of the greatest detectives of the pres- 
ent age, says: "If you want a criminal, look for 
the man who is most benefitted by the crime." 
Why did he not apply this reasoning at the time 
McKinley was shot by a poor ignorant fool who 
staked his life for a few dollars. 

When W. C. Bristol of Portland had fought 
Roosevelt for over two years and thugs tried to 
kill him, and finally put dynamite under his 
house, why did not this great detective find the 
man most interested in Bristol's destruction. 

When I fought Roosevelt for two years and 
Tom Carter came all the way from Washington 
to see "that this man Fullerton was got rid of" — 
and reader you can judge if my friend had a 
pipe dream when he rode to my house to warn 
me of impending danger. 

Because I could kill an antelope at a quarter 
of a mile on the jump and therefore they could 
not hire a man who wanted a rifle duel with 
that little 30-40 rifle was not their fault. 

The man who sent a thug all the way from 
New York to enter my home and "get rid of me," 
the thug who hypnotized my devoted son so that 
they left me to die, and because I did not die 
trumped up a charge of insanity and railroaded 
me to hell, who, I ask you American people, was 
the man most benefitted by my destruction — I 
leave you to name him. 



152 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

No. 156 Broadway, New York, 
October 15th, 1903. 
Hon. A. E. Hitchcock, 
Secretary of the Interior, 
Washington, D. C. 

Dear Sir: 

Supported by the request of a large number of 
tourists in the Yellowstone National Park, we 
beg to lay before you the following facts: 

The subscribers, with their wives, entered the 
Yellowstone National Park on Sunday, Septem- 
ber 6th, for the regular five and half days' tour. 
On the following morning, six stage loads of 
tourists started out from the Mammoth Hot 
Springs Hotel. Our party occupied one of the 
stages. The first stage contained a party of 
some ten people from Butte, Montana. Well 
supplied with alcoholic beverages, with which 
they plied their driver from time to time, they 
vented their enthusiasm in the singing of songs 
of the rag-time variety during the ride to the 
Norris Lunch Station. There they entertained 
the other guests with singing and shouting in 
the dining room, without objection on the part 
of the management, and subsequently approached 
members of our party and others, two of them 
ladies, with free and easy salutations, which, 
under the circumstances, were far from pleas- 
ant, in fact, insulting. 

The same boisterous conduct prevailed during 
the afternoon. At "Larry's" they found a kin- 
dred spirit, and being there told "that the house 



roosevelt's adversary 153 

was their's" proceeded to make the most both 
of the house and the encampment adjoining. 

On Tuesday, at the Thumb Lunch Station, the 
manager put a quietus upon them for the first 
time. They went by boat from the Thumb to 
the Lake Hotel. When their driver started out 
with his empty stage, he was reeling in his seat, 
and we subsequently heard that he fell off dur- 
ing the drive around the lake. At the Lake Ho- 
tel either exhausted nature, or good manage- 
ment, kept the party fairly quiet. There was 
more singing and more coarse conduct, but it 
was comparatively tame. By noon of the next 
day, they resumed their objectional conduct and 
by the time they reached the Canyon Hotel were 
vulgarly hilarious. That evening, before dinner, 
a number of their party, including the womeni 
gathered in the "Wine Room" of the Hotel, and 
the sounds issuing therefrom, heard throughout 
the Hotel corridors, were such as might be ex- 
pected from a Bowery dive. After exploiting 
themselves in song at the top of their lungs as 
"beauts from Butte, Montana," they consigned 
to "hell," and also in song, various people whose 
names were borne by members of our party, and 
having "damned the Filipinos," adjourned to the 
dining room, where they again indulged in coarse 
wit and dance-hall songs. In this party were 
four women. In the room of one of them sev- 
eral of the party gathered after dinner. This 
room was on the floor above the office, and the 
noise proceeding therefrom echoed through the 
hotel corridor. There was singing, shouting, 



154 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

and an entertainment of the dance-hall variety 
and of a nature so remarkable that it attracted 
a crowd of servitors and soldiers outside the 
hotel, who secured an excellent view of the per- 
formance through the windows of the well light- 
ed room. About nine p.m. two of our party, 
with their wives, went to their rooms, which 
were on opposite sides of the corridor on the first 
first floor. One room joined that in which the 
uproar was taking place. The disturbance was 
so great and so disquieting to people who de- 
sired to seek rest after a fatiguing journey, that 
the occupants of this room asked the hotel clerk 
to stop the noise. The clerk went to the room 
occupied by the Butte party, for that purpose. 
A violent altercation ensued. Several men and 
women came from the room; all joined in de- 
nouncing the clerk in unmeasured terms. The 
latter called a sergeant as the military officer 
in authority. The sergeant met with a warm 
reception — denunciation on the part of the men, 
endearing reproaches from one of the women, 
and a slap in the face, we are told, from an- 
other. The sergeant evidently did not care to 
arrest these people, without orders from Major 
Pitcher. Resort was had to the telegraph with 
a view to communication with Major Pitcher. 
One of the Butte party, and apparently the ring 
leader, who was also a telegraph operator, took 
possession of the instrument to the exclusion 
of all others, and after some half hour's work, 
apparently found the Major, and reported a mes- 
sage from him as follows: "Have a good time, 



ROOSEVELT'S ADVERSARY 155 

boys, but don't disturb the other guests." This 
repeated to the others of the Butte party, was 
the signal for more hilarity of a coarse and vul- 
gar character, which was kept up until after 
eleven o'clock. 

Several of the Butte party were, of course, 
considerably the worse for liquor, and some of 
the women were also. The latter paraded up 
and down the hotel halls, and repeatedly de- 
nounced in loud and coarse language the "women 
from Boston and New York," whom they held 
responsible for the action of the clerk and ser- 
geant. One of these women gave utterance to 
remarks reflecting on the chastity of the women 
in the hotel. One of them tried to force herself 
into the room where two of the ladies of our 
party were attempting to seek refuge. Subse- 
quently she pounded upon the door of this room 
and so conducted herself that both of the ladies 
were soon in a condition bordering on nervous 
collapse. During all this time repeated attempts 
were made to get the manager of the hotel to 
come from his room, to which he had retired 
early in the evening, but without avail. One of 
the clerks and the housekeeper, when finally 
aroused to the occasion, tried unsuccessfully to 
put an end to the disturbance. The rest of the 
management seemed to be utterly incapable of 
handling the situation, or unwilling to incur the 
disfavor of the disturbing element. 

Suffice it to say, this body of tourists, citizens 
from all over the United States, people from 
England, Holland, various parts of Europe and 



156 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

South Africa, in an isolated locality forty miles 
from headquarters, were practically at the mer- 
cy of this party from Butte. But for the pres- 
ence of the women, the men among the tourists 
would have readily taken up and disposed of the 
situation to their complete satisfaction. Under 
the trying circumstances, and after the message 
reported from Major Pitcher, there was nothing 
for them to do but to submit to the indignity 
put upon them and their wives. 

Several of the tourists who set out from the 
Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel on September 6th, 
stopped over a day at one of the other hotels, 
and thus escaped the attentions of the Butte 
party. Unfortunately, most of us were unable to 
do this. 

The following day, upon their arrival at the 
Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, the subscribers 
and several other tourists made a statement of 
the facts as herein set forth to Major Pitcher, 
in the presence of five or six of the Butte peo- 
ple. We have no wish to criticise Major Pitch- 
er. We do not know what message was sent to 
him by the Butte telegrapher, nor do we know 
whether he had been informed of the previous 
notorious proceedings of the Butte party during 
their journey through the Park. We do think 
however, that performances of this character 
should have been brought to his attention by 
some of his command, and we ascribe the fault 
to the system which will permit such things to 
take place without the knowledge of the officer 
la command. 



roosevelt's adversary 157 

Above and beyond all, however, we wish to 
arraign the management of the hotels, for it was 
they who should have held these disturbances in 
check and enforced order, and we think and 
recommend that a thorough investigation should 
be made, and that those responsible for the fail- 
ure to suppress the said disturbances should 
be held accountable. We further recommend 
that some system should be devised by which, 
in the future, such disturbances may be made 
impossible, to the end that the National Park, 
established for "the pleasure of the American 
people," may not become a by-word as a place 
for the entertainment of disorderly and drunken 
tourists, to the annoyance of other visitors and 
to the discredit of the American people. 

We deem it our duty, as American citizens, to 
bring this disgraceful matter to your attention. 
Personal affront we might overlook, and, while 
we sympathize with one or two of the members 
of the Butte party who assured us that they did 
not drink and deprecated the proceedings of 
their associates, we take this action so that sim- 
ilar unfortunate occurrences may not take place 
in the future. 

For confirmation of the above statements, we 
are authorized to refer you to Mr. John P. M. 
Richards of Spokane & Eastern Trust So., Spo- 
kane, Washington; Mr. Francis X. Brosnan of 
146 West 74th street/New York City; Mr. Hilton 
A. Parker, Union League Club, Chicago; Miss 
Whipple, Kansas City, Mo.; Mr. G. Percy Mead of 
Woodlands, Bicton, Shrewsbury, England; Dr. 



158 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

Victor C. Vaughn, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Furth- 
er, we feel justified in referring you to all those 
whose names appear upon the register of the 
Canyon Hotel of September 10th, except those 
who are registered from Butte, Montana. Their 
names also are upon the register. 

In concluding we beg to call your attention 
to an extract from the regulations issued by 
you and dated February 7th, 1902, "9. No drink- 
ing saloon or barroom will be permitted within 
the limits of the Park. 11. Persons who render 
themselves obnoxious by disorderly conduct 
* * * may be summarily removed from the 
Park, etc." 

Very respectfully, 

William H. Sage, 

156 Broadway, 
New York City. 
William A. Jones, Jr., 
141 Broadway, 
New York City. 



University of Michigan, 
Department of Medicine ond Surgery, 

Ann Arbor, December 30, 1903. 

This is to state that I, Victor C. Vaughn of Ann 
Arbor, Michigan, accompanied by two of my 
sons, started from Livingston, Montana, Septem- 
ber 6th, 1903, for the usual trip through Yellow- 
stone National Park. I had visited the Park in 



roosevelt's adversary 159 

1896 and had found it at that time well man- 
aged, and I was anxious that my sons should 
see the many wonderful displays of nature ex- 
hibited in the Park. At the hotel at the Mam- 
moth Hot Springs, we found a crowd of ten or 
twelve exceedingly noisy people who were evi- 
dently hand and glove with the military com- 
mander of the Park and who were making the 
hotel corridors ring with songs, some of which 
were not objectional, while others were profane 
and still others approached the vulgar. 

In going over the grounds at the Mammoth 
Hot Springs, I was pained and humiliated to 
notice that many of the placards posted at dif- 
ferent places, bearing the rules supposed to gov- 
ern the Park, were disfigured by the names and 
initials of people. At one place, that is Bath 
Lake, the placard contained in large letters an 
obscene sentence which was plainly noticeable 
to every one, and which must have been humil- 
iating to every decent American citizen. 

The next day, September, the 7th, we started 
from the Mammoth Hot Springs on the usual 
trip. The party which had been so noisy at 
the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel filled one stage 
at the Norris Basin. This same party indulged 
very freely in drink, became exceedingly hilari- 
ous, and were, to say the least, guilty of ungen- 
tlemanly and unwomanly acts. 

That night at the Fountain House this party 
was held in abeyance by the petty officer who 
was at the hotel and who evidently had some 
respect for himself and the government whose 



160 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

uniform he wore. The next day at the Upper 
Geyser Basin, Larry joined with the party al- 
ready spoken of, frequently led them to the 
drinking room and encouraged them in their 
questionable songs and deportment. The next 
morning between the Upper Geyser and the 
Basin, and the Lake, this party made their driv- 
er drunk so that it was with difficulty he kept 
his seat, and on reaching the Lake the party 
evidently were afraid to continue with the driv- 
er and took the boat, while the driver left for 
the Lake House so drunk that we thought he 
would lose his seat on the way. At the Lake 
House that evening the manager succeeded in 
quelling the uproariousness of the party. The 
next night at the Canyon House, the party al- 
ready referred to filled themselves with drink, 
and at least one man and one woman of the par- 
ty became highly intoxicated and went through 
the halls making obscene remarks and singing 
profane songs. Liquor was freely served to peo- 
ple and about midnight the uproar became so 
great that it was impossible for any one to 
sleep. I arose, dressed myself, and went from 
my room, and found a pitiable state of affairs. 
The young clerk at the desk was unable to quiet 
the drunken crowd and called in a sergeant who 
threatened their arrest. When this was done, 
one of the men belonging to the drunken party 
took possession of the telegraph and held com- 
munication with Major Pitcher of the Mammoth 
Hot Springs, and reported that the Major had 
replied that they could go ahead, have as much 



roosevelt's adversary 161 

fun as they wanted, and that no arrests were to 
be made. The next day several of us confronted 
Major Pitcher with this statement, and he ac- 
knowledged that this statement was correct. 
The hotel was simply terrorized. Decent wom- 
en were shocked at the obscene language which 
flowed volubly from the lips of both men and 
women who were highly intoxicated. 

I have traveled through the greater part of 
the civilized world, and I have never seen in any 
place, either of high or of low degree, the 
shocking exhibition that was made at the Can- 
yon House that night. There were several for- 
eigners who were insulted to their faces by the 
drunken crowds and were plainly told that 
drunken people had the protection of the Com- 
mander of the Park, which, to the best of my 
knowledge and belief, after consultation with 
Major Pitcher the next day, was true. In other 
words, Major Pitcher in communication with the 
people, who were threatened with arrest by one 
of his under officers sent word that no arrests 
were to be made and placed the hotel at the dis- 
posal of the drunken crowd. Upon reaching the 
Mammoth Hot Springs the next afternoon, sev- 
eral of us went to Major Pitcher and lodged a 
complaints, giving the facts as substantially stat- 
ed above. 

(Signed) Victor C. Vaughn. 

Victor C. Vaughn of Ann Arbor, Michigan, ap- 
peared before me, Elizer C. Calkins, a duly au- 
thorized notary public for the county af Wash- 



162 roosevelt's adversary 

tenaw, State of Michigan, this 30th day of De- 
cember, 1903, and made affidavit that the state- 
ments contained in the above are true. 

Elizer C. Calkins. 

Com. expires Feb. 15, 1905. 
Notary Public, Washtenaw County, 
State of Michigan. 
Note. 

This affidavit was sent me voluntarily by Dr. 
Vaughn. 

J. P. 



DEC 2 1912 



